


the reverie was not of me, you never saw nothing (so good for you and good for me)

by voxofthevoid



Series: lay your heart into my perfect machine [2]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America Steve Rogers, Character Death, Dominance and Submission, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Identity Issues, Liberal Use of Dream Sequences, M/M, Masochism, Mild Blood, Mindfuck, Modern Bucky Barnes, Modern Steve Rogers, Mystery, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Porn With Plot, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Rough Sex, Sadism, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:07:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 47,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22230811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: Wanda and Pietro Maximoff – twins, artificially enhanced, dangerous. The files are sparse on details.“What do you think?” asks a deep voice that has been haunting Steve’s dreams and waking hours.Steve tries to glare at James, but one look at those grey-blue eyes leaves him breathless, disarmed.They spent just one night together. The next morning, James woke with a limp in his step but with his skin wiped clean of every bruise. Steve made more, savage with the knowledge that nothing he could do would be permanent, that the imprint of his teeth couldn’t stay on James’s skin any more than James himself could stay with Steve in that sleepy motel in the middle of nowhere. And James let him, baring every inch of himself like he wanted the marks with the same desperation as Steve, like he was also choking on the looming end of their stolen hours.It’s been seven months, and now James is in front of him, solid and true, no longer a wistful daydream.-S.H.I.E.L.D and the Red Room throw Captain America and the Winter Soldier together for yet another mission. Serendipity is a tricky thing.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: lay your heart into my perfect machine [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1548889
Comments: 484
Kudos: 779





	1. i saw what you emanate (i held my hand to take a piece of it with me)

**Author's Note:**

> This shouldn’t be more than 6 or 7 chapters. Definitely not over 10. 
> 
> I'm [on tumblr](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/) so if you have questions, concerns, or wanna chat, hit me up ;)

“You’ll be working with the Red Room again,” Sitwell says, and the door opens, the timing too perfect to have been coincidental.

There’s two of them, but Steve only has eyes for one familiar face.

James Barnes, the Winter Soldier and Steve’s one-time lover, meets his eyes and flashes him a lopsided grin. In the seven months since their first and last mission together, Steve has told himself, more times than he can count, that he must have embellished James’s beauty, fond remembrance erasing all imperfections and wrapping rose-tinted around the good parts.

But no, James really is that gorgeous.

“–for now, Captain. Captain? Are you listening?”

Steve jerks his eyes away from James and looks at Sitwell again.

“Sorry, Director.”

Sitwell waves it off, laughing in that odd way he has where every sound of amusement comes out sounding nervous. It always turns Steve’s own smile awkward, though at least this time, he’s too preoccupied by the sheer effort it’s taking to keep his face blank to be really bothered by the way Sitwell gets under his skin. He feels guilty about it sometimes. Sitwell’s nice enough, and Steve’s sure he didn’t become the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D without reason, but the man doesn’t exactly inspire respect, at least not in Steve.

“I know you’re familiar with Agent Barnes,” Sitwell says, still chuckling. “Meet Agent Natalia Romanova.”

That’s when Steve finally notices the small, red-haired woman standing beside James. He wants to kick himself for getting so distracted that he completely missed the extra body in the office, but a closer look at Romanova makes it clear that she’s one of those people who will be seen if and only if she wants to be seen. It’s not an unusual skill for people in this line of work, but it is impressive that she wields it so effectively in an enclosed room with just four people.

“Or,” Sitwell says, “and I’m sure you’ve heard this name before, the Black Widow.”

Steve nods at her, his response a little belated.

“Looking forward to working with you.”

“Captain Rogers,” is all she says.

Her eyes are very sharp.

Steve doesn’t let his own stray back to James, forcing himself to turn to Sitwell instead.

“Now, as I was saying, we expect great things from this collaboration. You know your mission, Captain, Agents. The details have been transferred to your temp accounts. You can read up on the way to Sokovia.”

“We start now?” Steve asks, more formality than anything else. He’s used to this and has taken to packing his field kit whenever he’s called in.

“Transport at Bay 4,” Sitwell confirms, still smiling.

-

Wanda and Pietro Maximoff – twins, artificially enhanced, dangerous.

The files are sparse on details about the experiments that gave them their powers and who performed them. Another batch of power-hungry madmen messing around with science and magic, Steve assumes. Those pop up like severed hydra heads, and that thought sends a familiar frisson of rage through him. He tamps down on it, breathing deep through his nose.

“What do you think?” asks a deep voice that has haunted Steve’s dreams and waking hours for months now.

He tries to glare at James, but one look at those grey-blue eyes leaves him breathless, disarmed. It’s only Romanova’s presence that keeps Steve from blurting something that he may or may not regret.

“He’s the showy one,” he says, voice steady the way he’s trained it to be. “Superspeed and high metabolism. A threat, definitely, but she’s the one to watch out for.”

The files describe her in terms that try to be detached and scientific in the face of something that defies cold reason. The human mind is hard enough to understand on its own. Where do you even begin with when it comes to a mind that can bend reality?

Steve’s a simple guy sometimes. _Fucking magic_ is enough of an explanation for him.

“We don’t know the full extent of what she can do,” Romanova says. Her voice is deep. She has no accent and bites her words like they’re each a curse. “Not fully. The information is inadequate.”

“It is,” Steve agrees. “But we work with what we’ve got.”

She stares at him long and hard. It’s a piercing stare. Steve doesn’t know what she’s looking for. Weakness, maybe; evidence that he’s not good enough to see this mission through to the end. That’s sometimes a problem in teams like this, where people who don’t know each other except by bloody reputations, and sometimes not even that, are expected to work together. Steve already knows it won’t be an issue with James. They fell into step easily enough the first time, James slotting into place at Steve’s back like he was born for it. And to Steve, that is as strong an enticement as the attraction that simmers under his skin.

Romanova nods after a long pause.

“We won’t fail,” she says softly.

“Of course we won’t,” James says, and Steve’s eyes runs helplessly back to his face. “Too much skill in this team to fail.”

Romanova snorts, but there doesn’t seem to be any venom in it.

“Pride comes before the fall,” Steve says, a little impulsively, voice almost – but not quite – teasing.

James grins. His eyes crinkle at the corners, and Steve can’t look away.

“Then one of you will have to catch me.”

-

They don’t have much in the way of a lead. They have a location, a puzzle board that’s missing half the pieces, and the smoking ruins of a laboratory torn apart by a woman’s mind.

It’s not the kind of work any of them should be assigned to. S.H.I.E.L.D has smaller teams for this, underappreciated field agents who collect data and analyze it to the last dying shred to figure out a location for the heavy hitters to swoop in on. But when the last team they sent came back, half were in body bags and the other half were in straitjackets. Steve can make an educated guess as to which twin did what.

They get two rooms in a semi-decent motel. It’s a bit better than the one Steve and James stayed in last time. The Red Room agents have one room. Steve has one to himself, almost on the other end of the hallway. He catches James’s eye as he passes him on the way to his door, and the slow, crooked smile James gives him makes his stomach tighten into a pulsing knot.

Inside the room, Steve stops only strip before heading to the bathroom for an ice-cold shower.

His body, dick especially, protests the cruel treatment, but Steve finds that memories of James – his eyes, his mouth, his body – keeps him warm despite the sluice of freezing water down his skin.

He exits the bathroom, dry but nude, and stops short at the sight that greets him.

James, leaning fully-dressed against Steve’s door, doesn’t even try to hide his leering. His eyes drag slowly down Steve’s body and then back up again, taking their sweet time. There’s nothing subtle about the way they linger on Steve’s groin, but then Steve’s cock isn’t subtle either, perking up at that long, hot gaze.

Still, Steve at least tries to be the responsible one.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“That is what you said last time too.” James’s reply is as immediate as it’s insolent. “And we both know how that ended.”

Steve doesn’t need the reminder. There hasn’t been a single cell of him that’s forgotten that night – and the morning after – with James. It seemed a dream sometimes, but one Steve was content to linger in and savor.

“It’s different this time,” he says, but his actions contradict his words as his feet take him closer to James, step by step. “You have a partner now.”

James frowns.

“Me and Natasha, we’re not like that.”

“Not what I meant. It was just last time. We could do what – what we did. This time, she’ll know.”

“Does it matter?” James shrugs. “She will not care. If she does, I will tell her not to.”

“Is that enough?”

James reaches out. Steve doesn’t realize how close they’ve gotten until James’s metal fingers spread out over his bare chest, right over his thundering heart.

“The real question is, Captain–” James leans in, close enough to kiss and still so far away. “–do you care?”

“I told you,” Steve says, voice pitched low, thick with something great and unwise, “to call me Steve.”

It’s an answer, or as good as any. James grins, triumphant, and leans in. Steve meets him where he is, hungry for the soft warmth of James’s lips and the heady heat between them.

The kiss is chaste for a moment, the two of them standing still with their mouths pressed close and unmoving. Then, James shudders, his rushed exhale falling on Steve’s face.

“You do not know,” he says, a catch in his voice, “how long I’ve spent thinking of this, of you.”

“I know,” Steve whispers, lips moving against James’s jaw. “Trust me, I know.”

James makes a punched-out noise and thrusts his mouth back on Steve’s, and this time, it’s anything but chaste. Steve slams James back against the door, pressing his naked body all along the length of him. There’s something about the disparity that gets to him. It’s like they’re wearing their desperation on their skin, everything else disregarded in favor of getting their hands, their mouths on each other.

He runs out of patience soon enough, the need to feel all of James on his outweighing the secret thrill that comes with the scrape of fabric on skin.

“Take it off,” he growls, tugging at James’s shirt, “or I rip it off you.”

“Yes,” James moans, “Do it.”

Steve shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but he is, stunned for a second by that needy demand and the eager ease of James’s acquiescence. He doesn’t think about the ramifications, how Romanova will definitely know if James goes back to the room wearing Steve’s clothes. He just grabs James’s shirt by the collar and tears.

It splits unevenly down his torso. Steve parts the edges, gentle now, like he’s unwrapping a gift. His memory, though perfect, did not do justice to James. He’s the kind of person whose reality you can never capture, not in pictures and certainly not in wistful wisps of memory.

“God,” Steve whispers reverently, splaying his palms along the hard plane of James’s stomach and stroking slowly upwards. “Look at you.”

James shivers. When Steve looks at his face, he finds James with his eyes half-closed and mouth parted. He’s a vision, and Steve wants to devour him, over and over and over.

The thought’s accompanied by the sharp slap of reason.

“Fuck,” he breathes, digging his fingertips lightly into James’s skin. “I don’t have anything. No lube.”

James gives him a slow blink and a slower smile.

“Doesn’t matter. You’ve got a mouth.”

Steve almost drops to his knees then and there, hungry for James in ways he can’t conceptualize let alone control, but James takes Steve’s hands and slides them around his body and then further down until they’re resting on the swell of his ass. Steve doesn’t even need to think to sink his fingers into those yielding muscles. He squeezes tight enough to make James gasp sweetly.

“Think – think you can get me open with your mouth, Steve?”

Realization burns itself into Steve’s skin. His face flames hot, but the maddening throb of want in his gut is _scorching_.

He kisses James, a brief and violent thing, and doesn’t give either of them time to catch their breaths before spinning James around and shoving him face-first against the door. James’s pants suffer the same fate as his shirt. He’s not wearing underwear, and Steve takes a moment – choking a feeling that might be delight or despair – to wonder if James planned this or if this is just the way he is.

He doesn’t ask because he’s sure that whatever answer James gives will be calculated to rile Steve up more.

He slaps one cheek, more to tease than with any real intent. But then James’s whole body seizes up and he whimpers, all of it going right to Steve’s dick. He does it again, hitting the same spot, and James is loud and unfettered in his approval.

“Should’ve known you’d like that,” Steve says, voice hoarse and rough with need. “Slut for pain, aren’t you?”

James’s only response is to spread his legs wider and arch his back, fucking presenting himself. Steve grabs the cheek he smacked and gives it a good, groping squeeze, watching the flesh bulge out from between his fingers. James is breathing heavily, and it’s minute but present, the way he’s pushing back into the touch.

Steve lets him go, runs his palm soothingly over the hurt, and drops to his knees.

James swears in Russian when Steve’s breath falls on the blooming bruise on his ass. The words turn into a startled cry when Steve sinks his teeth into the reddened flesh.

Steve sucks a mark, then another, and another, leaving red and pink etched in his wake. They’ll be gone in a matter of hours. That morning, James woke with a limp in his step but with his skin wiped clean of every bruise. Steve made more, savage with the knowledge that nothing he could do would be permanent, that the imprint of his teeth couldn’t stay on James’s skin any more than James himself could stay with Steve in that sleepy motel in the middle of nowhere. And James let him, baring every inch of himself like he wanted the marks with the same desperation as Steve, like he was also choking on the looming end of their stolen hours.

And he does the same now, shuddering and keening but not twitching away for even a second as Steve bites and sucks a claim on the sensitive skin of his ass and thighs.

Steve spreads him wide, his thumb brushing over a particularly livid bruise.

“Steve,” James breathes, the name dripping with need.

“I know,” Steve murmurs, nosing along the inside of one cheek, licking at the taut skin and inhaling the heavy musk of him. “I’ve got you, James.”

James makes a small, pleased sound. It’s a stark contrast to the high-pitched shout that tears free of him when Steve finally licks over his little hole. He tries to jerk away, but Steve holds him fast, and the next moment, it doesn’t matter because James is grinding back, shoving his ass into Steve’s mouth with clumsy desperation. Steve tightens his grips and pushes James forward, cooing at his strangled shout as he’s pinned dick-first to the door. It can’t be a very comfortable position, but James can take it, Steve knows he can, and if he does his part right, James won’t even notice it soon enough.

He seals his mouth over James pretty, puckered hole and sucks.

James damn near _screams_.

“Quiet,” Steve warns, pulling back. “We’ve got neighbors this time, pal.”

“Fuck, fuck, I’ll – yeah,” James says, half-blabbering, and doesn’t that just go to Steve’s head.

He nips teasingly at the delicate skin to the side of his hole and lets James’s shocked cry spur him back to business. He makes it wet and sloppy, half in answer to that smirking challenge James threw at him but mostly because he really fucking likes this, burying his face between someone’s legs and feeling them unravel at the seams. Steve’s not unfamiliar with the high that comes from wielding power. There are times when there’s adrenaline flooding his veins and his body is hurling past human limitations and the shield is a live, pulsing thing at his fingertips – times when he feels godlike.

And then there are times when all that pales in comparison to this – a body willingly surrendered to him, shuddering and sweet, breaking apart at his touch so that he can put it back together again.

He licks inside James, moaning at the dark, bitter taste of him. James cries out and Steve can feel the way he almost buckles, all that strength brought to heel by nothing but a wet mouth.

Steve hides a grin against the soft warmth between James’s cheeks and swipes his tongue over hole again. It’s loose, wet, parting easily for Steve’s tongue and then a finger alongside it. James curses at the stretch. He pounds at the door, and Steve knows from the sound that it’s his right fist, but even then, the door groans in protest.

Steve scrapes his teeth over James’s rim, a warning that backfires when James shouts, the sounding splintering midway into a high, shuddering whine. The door groans again, and this time, Steve just laughs, kissing James’s twitching hole because he can’t kiss his mouth.

He sets about stretching James out, getting him wet, and he doesn’t stop until his lips are numb and his jaw is aching and James is begging to get fucked, thrusting his body back even as he whines for Steve to just get up and get in him already.

Steve stands up, wiping his mouth on his arm. He’s not all that steady on his feet either, though he’s faring better than James who almost collapses when Steve pries him away from the door. Steve pushes him up against the wall, back-first this time, and pins him there with his own body.

“Thought I told you to be quiet,” he says, smiling at James and not finding it in him to be all that irked. “Might as well fuck you out in the hallway with how loud you are.”

“Do it,” James says. He sounds gone already. Looks it too, flushed all over, black swallowing the blue-grey of his irises. “Show them what you do to me. I’d let you.”

Steve’s cock throbs almost painfully in response.

“Jesus,” he breathes, pressing forward, almost crushing James against the wall.

“Now that is not my name,” James says, grinning lazily, the smile of a man who knows exactly what he’s doing.

“ _James_.”

James chuckles, but it’s cut off by Steve spinning him around again. He catches himself with his hands on the wall, those finely honed and battle-tested instincts good for more than just violence. The metal plates realign with a series of oddly pleasant clicks. Steve yanks James’s back by the hips and lets his cock settle where he had his face just earlier.

“Yes, yes,” James gasps, frantic again, just like that, pushing back against Steve. “God, fuck me, fuck me.”

“And that’s not my name,” Steve says because he’s an asshole like that. James growls, the sound stuttering to a stop when Steve grinds his cock against him, hard and intent like he can slide in just like this. “But I’m a nice guy, so I’ll allow it.”

“Bastard,” James says, and his tone doesn’t match the curse, not at all.

Steve licks his palm, then spits into it for good measure. It’s not much, but with precome and saliva spread over his dick, he’s slick enough to get inside James if he tries hard enough.

“You sure?” he asks though he knows what the answer will be. “It’ll hurt like a bitch.”

James makes a low, snarling sound.

“Captain,” he bites out. “Make me bleed.”

Steve doesn’t know what his reaction to that says about him, but he doesn’t care, drunk on the fire in his blood and the hunger clawing up his guts. He spreads James’s ass wider with one hand and positions his cock with the other, taking a moment to just watch his cockhead rest against James’s hole. It looks monstrous like this – his dick wasn’t a small to begin with and the serum took that to uncanny levels. And James looks so small there, his little hole all pink and wet and clenching around nothing like it can’t wait to be speared open.

He can take it, Steve damn well knows he can take it, but it’s a hell of a sight to see.

And god help him, he likes it.

“Don’t scream,” he says, and he fucks right in.

James screams, of course he screams, but Steve’s been expecting that and manages, through the flare of hot-tight- _hot_ to slap a hand over James’s mouth, muffling his sounds. It leaves him with an open mouth against his palm, breathing wet and ragged into it.

“Bite me if you need to speak,” he says and waits just enough for James’s answering moan before he sets a pace that could break them both.

James is the only one who can take him at his peak, and the worst of it is that Steve never knew what he was missing before James waltzed into his bed with his whiskey-slick lips and ruined him forever. Steve did fuck other people after he and James went their separate ways, and it was fine, good even, but the memory lingered, of how it felt to just close his eyes and let go and trust that his partner wouldn’t shatter at his strength.

 _Make me bleed_ , James said, but Steve fucks him like he wants to tear him open.

And James is a vision, writhing against the wall, against Steve, muscles straining under sweat-drenched skin. Steve drags his mouth over the stocky expanse of his back, licking up the salt of him. He bites down, teeth sinking in deep, just shy of breaking skin.

James cries out, but the sound is turned into a long whimper by Steve’s hand pressed tight to his lips. It tugs at him, gets him ramming into James in a fresh frenzy, pushing him up against the wall each time their bodies slam savagely together. James keeps clenching around him, muscles tightening almost painfully, sucking Steve in and keeping him there.

He can feel the edge looming and slides a hand around James to fist his cock.

A few rough pulls are all it takes to turn James into a quivering, loose-limbed wreck. Steve curves the hand over his mouth into a looser, softer curve because he can’t resist listening. It’s worth it – James isn’t that loud when he comes, his noises softer, wounded. Tears wet Steve’s hand, spreading over where his fingers are pressed to James’s face.

“Ssh,” he says without breaking stride, fucking into James, biting at his back, “Just a little–”

He buries his face in James’s back and fucks in deep and comes with a shattered cry of his own.

James keens, breath falling in hot bursts on Steve’s hand. Steve straightens up, cock slipping out of James, still half-hard. He slots his body against James’s back, pinning him between Steve’s bulk and the wall. James doesn’t seem to mind, going limp, letting Steve hold him up. Steve buries his face in James’s hair, breathing in the odd, pleasant scent there. Like this, with one thigh between James’s legs, he can feel him dripping, Steve’s come sliding out of him. It makes his cock twitch, oversensitivity smarting for a moment before the serum does its magic and lets it swell to full length. 

James groans, and Steve notices a little belatedly that he has removed his hand from James’s mouth and has it wrapped loosely around his neck now, nothing threatening about it – just holding him. Keeping him.

“Fuck,” James says, incredulous. “Steve, you are – my body is not this resilient.”

Steve lets his hand slacken and trail down. The sweat on James’s skin gives away to something thicker, and Steve can’t help draw a senseless pattern in the mess. James makes a sound that’s too tired to be a laugh but gets the meaning across. In answer, Steve slides his hand lower and wraps his fingers around a cock that’s sweetly limp in his grip. James goes tense all over, keening softly.

“Can’t,” he rasps, a moan trapped in the word.

“I know, I know.” Steve kisses his hair, his neck, the shell of his ear, tender little things that make James tremble. “But I can. You want me in you, honey?”

James slumps further, muscles going limp like the life’s been punched out of him. Steve backs off a little so he can hold him better, and that earns him a moan too, one that’s more sweet than aroused.

“You don’t have to–”

“Want it,” James cuts in, voice shaking with pure need. “Want to fucking die on your cock.”

“Fucking hell, James.”

James lets his head loll back against Steve’s shoulder. They kiss, and it’s awkward, the angle all wrong, but Steve doesn’t ever want it to stop. He’s too distracted to remember, until it’s a little too late, where his mouth has been.

“Shit.” He pulls away and makes a soft, calming noise at James’s disappointed whine. “Had my mouth on your asshole, remember?”

“It is my asshole, Steve, I don’t care, _kiss_ me.”

Well, Steve has no argument against that.

They kiss, and James slowly finds his own feet, the fucked-out limpness leaving him as he reverts into the pushy little shit Steve likes. He bites at Steve’s lip and pulls at his hair and generally makes a highly arousing nuisance of himself.

Steve tries to get them into the bed, several feet away at a manageable distance, but James is too busy kissing Steve to work his legs, and Steve’s not so unaffected that he can manage to coordinate two sets of limbs with a pretty man squirming in his arms. They collapse on the floor; Steve lays James out on his back and settles between his legs, groaning when James wraps them tightly around his hips.

“You’re eager,” he says, grinning down at James’s flushed face.

“You haven’t made me bleed yet, Captain.”

Steve reaches between James’s legs and pushes two fingers into him. He’s open and so fucking _wet_. It drives Steve a little crazy, and James’s reaction doesn’t help, his shocked little sigh and fluttering lids burning themselves into Steve’s mind. He pulls his fingers out and sure enough, they’re smeared with red.

“Yes,” he says, “I did.”

James’s eyes go impossibly darker at the sight.

“I thought you were the type,” James says, every shred of composure gone as if it never existed. “Saw the way you looked at me, before you even learned my name. Knew you wanted to put me through a wall. With your cock.”

Steve slides back into him, needing to be inside him with a vehemence that defies all reason. James’s mouth falls open, but no sound escapes as he shudders through the slow, dragging slide of Steve’s cock into him.

“I was right,” he says, a moment after Steve has settled in, and he sounds wrecked, utterly gone.

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, almost like a confession. “Guess you were.”

“Didn’t think you could,” James says, something wickedly delighted in the curve of his mouth. “But you can.”

Steve lies on top of James as best as he can, blanketing his body with his own. James is hot and solid under him, wonderfully, blisteringly alive. He’s got his eyes open, staring right into Steve’s.

“I can. And I’m the only one who can give you this,” Steve says, and then he starts moving.

James arches sharply under him, but Steve slams him back down, hands tights on his shoulders. It puts most of his weight on James on top of the sheer, tearing force of Steve’s hips ramming into him, and there’s nothing like the visceral satisfaction of seeing James’s eyes clench shut and mouth fall open on a soundless scream.

He slows down a little, aware of the hard, unforgiving floor and how raw James must already be.

James, being James, doesn’t let that stand for long.

“They’d have a heart attack,” he says – mumbles, really, voice low, accent oddly absent.

“Who?” Steve grunts, shifting to get a better angle, a gasp torn out of him when James clenches tight around him in response to the change.

“America,” James says, and it takes Steve a moment to even register the word. “Their favorite hero, fucking a Russian man on the floor like an animal. Imagine it.”

Steve most emphatically doesn’t want to imagine it, but his dumbass brain helpfully provides him with an image of the two of them fucking being broadcasted nationwide. It’s testament to how gone he is on James that his dick doesn’t wilt just from the mental image.

“Don’t you ever shut up?” Steve asks, more than a little despairing.

“Maybe if you put your back into it,” James says, grinning with too much teeth. “Can barely feel you there, Steve, maybe I’m bor–”

He dissolves into shouted Russian and then into nothing but high, keening sounds as Steve indulges him and puts his fucking back into it.

“Hard–”

He hikes James’s hips further up and slams in deep enough to force the air out of his own lungs.

“–enough–”

James rakes his nails down Steve’s arms, the metal ones leaving bruises while the others split skin and draw blood.

“–for–”

Steve lets the pain burn through him, spur him into a savage pace.

“–you?”

James tosses his head violently to the side, finally fucked quiet, and Steve sinks his teeth into the inviting curve of his throat. James whimpers like a trapped animal and writhes under Steve, against him, _around_ him.

Steve lets it wash over, take him over, mind shutting down as his body spirals into animal need.

He buries himself in James, over and over and over, the two of them reduced to the slick sounds of flesh on flesh.

His orgasm hits him like freight train, and he spills with a scream muffled in James’s skin, spilling into his clenching heat. James’s hold on him gentles then, hands rubbing soothingly over Steve’s shoulders and back as he shakes and shudders through a consuming climax.

Afterwards, he slumps on James, slipping out of him with a wet sound that makes them both whine. Steve has just enough control over his soupy limbs to roll off James and on to the floor beside him. The chill of it makes him hiss, but getting up and walking – even crawling – to the bed is unthinkable, and anyway, the warmth James radiates is comfort enough.

He curls into James, nosing at his shoulder. James makes a soft sound and shifts, lifting his arm so that Steve can squirm closer. Fingers slide into his hair, massaging the scalp. Steve hums and tilts his head to allow better access.

Steve doesn’t sleep like that, but contentment pulls his lids down and he shuts down a little, everything in him narrowed to James’s warmth and his scent.

“For the record,” he says once most of his mental faculties have returned, “I’m openly bisexual. The general public wouldn’t be that alarmed.”

James snorts but answers, not bothering to hide his indulgent amusement.

“So the man in Russian man is fine. What about the Russian?”

“Who knows anymore. Things have been different since the Decimation. Even more after the Resurrection.”

“We won’t find out,” James says, very matter-of-fact, nothing wistful about it. Steve’s the one who feels an odd pang in his chest. “It is very strange, your country’s obsession with the Captains America. Even after everything”

“Why? It makes sense to me. Then again, I grew up idolizing Peggy Carter.”

“The second Captain, yes? Founder of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“Yeah. She was amazing. A hero. She’s the one who started the tradition of passing on the shield. The first guy–”

“Your namesake.”

“No, he’s not, I told you this,” Steve says, biting at James who aims a shit-eating grin down at him. “Fuck you, pal. Anyway, the first guy didn’t pass on the shield. We don’t know how he died, only that it was in the war.”

James sighs at that, a quiet, morose sound.

“Poor bastard,” he says softly, and something about that makes Steve ache too.

“Yeah. Guess he was. It’s a shitty end. We don’t even know what he looked like.”

“Maybe he looked like you,” James says, and Steve looks up, narrowing his eyes at him. James smiles, but it’s too damn genuine for Steve to hold on to his irritation. “You have to admit, you are very stereotypically American. Golden hair, blue eyes, your body.”

James says that last bit with a leer, and Steve valiantly tries to fight off a blush.

“I’m stereotypically white is what you mean. Forget that, back to the point. Why’d you say it’s weird how people are so into the Captains?”

“You are celebrities. Makes for bad spies.”

“S.H.I.E.L.D doesn’t want us to be spies. We’re supposed to be soldiers. Well, supersoldiers, though it’s been a long time since anyone was stupid enough to try and make that literal.”

James laughs, body shaking against Steve’s. It’s a nice sound, the kind you could get used to ringing through your life.

“You admit you were stupid.”

“You can’t judge, James. Besides, I’d have died otherwise.” James goes very still, so Steve hurries to explain. “No, I mean – I was with a STRIKE team before the whole Captain America gig. Got exposed to this experimental bioweapon. The Erskine experiment was my only chance, so I took it.”

“Oh,” James says, tone unreadable. His body’s stiff against Steve, but then it starts to relax, bit by bit. “I have a similar story. I fell. From a great height. It was a miracle I did not die. My…employers decided to see if Zola’s work could save me. It did, but even the serum could not salvage my arm. Every miracle has its limits, I suppose.”

Steve kisses the side of James’s chest, the only comfort he can offer. James’s fingers tighten briefly in his hair.

“Zola?”

“A long dead scientist. Nazi bitch, but he doctored Erskine’s serum, tried to make it more – survivable, I suppose. Clearly, he did not succeed. I am the only one.” James stops and snorts, the sound lacking any humor. “I should not talk after sex. I do not tell people these things, you know.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that either. He kisses James again, reaching for his other hand and bringing the knuckles to his lips.

“Neither do I,” he confesses after a pause. “But you – you’re different. We have…shared life experience, you could say.”

“You sound like you value that.”

“I do. And for what it’s worth, I’m glad you are alive.”

James’s eyes do that adorable crinkle again. It does obscene things to Steve’s emotions.

“And I am glad you’re alive. You’re a good man, Steve.”

Steve’s not so sure about that. He wanted to be a hero – do good, save people. S.H.I.E.L.D does those things, but sometimes, its methods crawl under his skin and make him want to rip it off.

He doesn’t say any of that to James, well aware that he’s a wetwork operative.

They fall back into comfortable silence.

James breaks it eventually, saying, “The floor is cold. We should go to bed.”

“Yeah,” Steve sighs.

“Carry me.”

Steve bursts into laughter, and James’s unimpressed huff just makes him lose it more.

“Can’t walk again?”

“If the room burned down, I will run just fine, but nothing’s on fire so yes, I cannot walk.”

Steve laboriously rises and stretches, groaning when parts of him audibly settle back into place. When he looks down, James is eyeing him appreciatively. He grins when Steve catches him looking, beautiful and unapologetic.

Steve bends down to scoop him up. James laughs, and the sound worms in between Steve’s ribs to wrap around his pounding heart. This man is trouble, but Steve’s been chasing trouble since the day he was born.

The question is if James wants to be caught. Whether he’ll let himself. Whether he _can_ , bound as surely as Steve is to forces bigger than either of them.

He pours James on the mattress and sits at the edge, looking at the vision he makes, splayed out on the white sheets. James smiles at him, but then the expression dims, and he reaches up, poking Steve between his eyebrows.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks.

“You,” Steve answers honestly.

“Do I inspire sadness, my Captain?”

Steve laughs in spite of himself and leans down, kissing James good and deep, showing him precisely what he inspires in Steve.

“You make me very happy, James,” he says, and that’s honest too.

Pink creeps up James’s neck. Steve watches, mesmerized and breathless, until James turns his face away, hiding half in the pillow and half under his hair.

“I’m hungry,” he says, and his voice has changed too, a little higher than it usually is. “You fucked all the energy out of me.”

“I’m the one who did all the work,” Steve points out, unspeakably endeared again.

“I took your monster cock, Steve. _Twice_. I deserve food.”

Steve’s stunned to silence by the strangest combination of pride and embarrassment.

“Fair enough,” he chokes out after a beat. Between strands of brows hair, he can see James’s mouth curve up, and well, Steve can’t let that go. “You take cock like a dream, sweetheart.”

James makes an incoherent noise and hides a little better.

“How about this – you give me a kiss, and I’ll go buy you some snacks from the store at the corner.”

James peeks out, and Steve can’t quite place the expression on his face, but it makes his insides squirm.

“I will kiss you anyway,” James says very softly. “No need for bribes.”

And then he’s reaching up and Steve’s bending down, and he’ll never get tired of this, kissing James, breathing his breath, and yeah, trouble.

“I’ll be right back,” Steve says, but he doesn’t pull away from James’s mouth for a long time.

-

He’s not sure what James likes to eat, but he knows he eats a lot. So he gets a bit of everything, sandwiches and chips and candies and chocolate. Steve’s quite aware of the spring in his step as he makes his way back to the motel. He has the strangest urge to whistle.

The good mood lasts until he opens his door.

James is nowhere to be seen, but he can hear the shower running and can make an educated guess.

Natalia Romanova stares at him from beside the window.

“Agent Romanova,” he greets cautiously. “Can I help you?”

“I came looking for James,” she says. “I could hear you the moment I opened my door.”

Steve’s face heats up again.

“I – sorry.”

Her eyes narrow further.

“Are you?”

Steve straightens at that, meeting her level gaze with one of his own.

“Depends. What am I supposed to be sorry for? Being with a man? No. Being with James? Also no.”

She laughs. At least, Steve thinks it’s supposed to be a laugh. It sounds like a snort married a chuckle and had a child, but the real ambiguity is in how the look in her eyes don’t change for a second. It’s sharp but blank. Steve can’t read a damn thing.

“I do not care you’re both men, Captain Rogers. I do care that we work for different people.”

Steve allows himself to relax, just a little.

“I don’t think my employers are very interested in who I sleep with.”

“Aren’t they?” She raises a single, stark eyebrow which communicates more than her bland words do. “Curious.”

“Enough, Natasha.”

Steve and Romanova both turn to the side. James has a towel wrapped around his waist, but his hair is dripping wet, rivulets of water sliding down his torso. He looks very much like he got out of the bathroom in a hurry.

“We’re allies,” he says, looking only at Romanova. “And I choose who I fuck.”

She shakes her head but doesn’t seem particularly angry.

“If you say so, James.”

She barely spares Steve a glance as she brushes past him. The door closes behind her with an ominous click.

Steve makes awkward eye-contact with James who just shrugs and whips the towel away from his hips and starts drying his hair. Something about it makes Steve laugh, though it’s a stilted thing.

“Will this be an issue?”

“No,” James says from under his towel. “Natasha is exactly as scary as she seems, maybe more, but as long as we don’t compromise the mission, she will not care. She will have questions.”

“Yeah?”

James stops toweling and wraps his hair in the fabric. The resulting image is more adorable than Steve is prepared to handle.

“Yes,” James says, oblivious to Steve’s little crisis. “She knows I’m not the type to jump into bed with anyone, and she knows I have worked with you once before. But it’s fine. It changes nothing.”

That assuages Steve’s worries about Romanova, but it also brings up a question he forgot to ask, too distracted by James’s…everything.

“Did you know?”

James tilts his head, an unspoken question.

“About this,” Steve clarifies. “Last time, you said that we might meet again. I thought you were being, I don’t know. Optimistic, I guess. Trying not to ruin the mood. But after today, I gotta wonder.”

James cross the room towards Steve with long, graceful strides. Despite the question hanging in the air, Steve easily opens his arms for James to step into, even though the bag of snacks makes it a little awkward.

“I am not much of an optimist, Steve,” James says. His eyes are very striking and very distracting. “But no, I did not know this would happen.”

“But–”

“Ssh, let me finish.”

Steve lets James’s finger on his lips silence him. He breathes, chest pushing out against James’s bare one, a reversal from earlier.

“I did not _know_ , but I heard rumors of collaboration, maybe a merger between our masters. And I hoped.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “I didn’t know anything.”

James smiles.

“I assumed. Did you miss me, Steve?”

“What do you think, pal?”

“Indulge me.”

“Yeah, James. I missed you.”

James preens a little, but there’s something else under the pleased glint in his eye.

“Did you miss me?” Steve asks.

And because James was put on this earth to drive Steve mad, he answers the question with another question.

“You fuck anyone the last seven months?”

“I – wha – what does that matter?” Steve sputters, torn between indignation and a strange kind of wariness.

“I’m curious, not jealous,” James says, not unkindly. “Were they as good as me? Did you think about me?”

Steve opens his mouth and shuts it just as fast, not having the slightest clue what to say. James shakes his head and takes pity on him.

“I did.” He presses his body closer to Steve’s and leans in to speak into his ear, breath tickling the shell. “No one compared. No one could make me scream the way you did.”

Steve shivers.

“Yeah,” he croaks. “It was – it was the same. I couldn’t – Christ, James, I couldn’t get you out of my head.”

James pulls back, not far, just enough that he can grin at Steve.

“Good,” he says, and Steve is struck silent by the sudden, startling surety that this, whatever they’re doing, whatever path they’re walking, will only end in disaster. But then James kisses him, hot and hard, and the bag slips from his fingers, and Steve finds it easy to just stop thinking.


	2. some reality got a hold of me now (and i don't think i'll escape)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James shivers, cheeks and ears a soft pink. Steve follows the color with his mouth, breathing deep against the flush like he can suck in all that warmth, take James deep into himself, keep him tucked away in his ribs, safe from anyone who’d take him from Steve. The thought startles him more than a little. It’s too possessive, too vicious, too unlike Steve.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got a tumblr here – voxofthevoid.

They don’t have anything solid to work with, just a series of minor leads collected by S.H.I.E.L.D’s analysts, the true, unsung heroes. The leads may or may not work out, which is par for the course, but at the moment, Steve’s more concerned about how this means that he’ll be spending days—maybe weeks—in close confines with James and Romanova.

At the same time.

On an individual level, Steve is comfortable with both of them. He and James have already established that they work well together and get along just fine, maybe a little too fine. And Romanova seems to be the kind of person who’ll make it easy but impersonal to work with her, which is a blessing of sorts in this line of work despite Steve’s natural tendency to try and build some sort of rapport. Still, the point is that Romanova alone wouldn’t be a problem, but the idea of Romanova alongside James makes Steve’s stomach flutter with nervous tension.

James spent the night in his room. In the morning, he woke Steve with his pretty mouth on his cock and let Steve pin him down and fist his cock until he shuddered to pieces. Then, he cleaned up and vanished to the room he shared with Romanova, kissing Steve goodbye with a carefree smile.

But James knows Romanova and has already demonstrated that he can take whatever questions she’ll throw at him. Steve’s not going to falter if she chooses to press again, but he’s never mixed business with pleasure and doing so now, with a man who’s not even a S.H.I.E.L.D agent, makes him nervous.

And this is a bad fucking mission to be nervous on.

Which is why he feels a peculiar blend of relief and exasperation when they climb into the Quinjet and Romanova vanishes into the cockpit without a second glance at Steve or James. It must be obvious, the way he’s gaping after her because James gives him a narrow-eyed look.

“She is a fine pilot,” he says, smiling with sharp edges. “You do not need to worry.”

It takes Steve a second to understand what James is implying.

“No, that’s not it. I was expecting to get, uh, grilled like last night.”

James blinks, and just like that, his expression is perfectly pleasant again.

“Ah,” he says delicately. “No. Natasha is not the type to…nag. Not you.”

“And you?”

“Oh, my ears, she will happily eat, but that’s the price of familiarity.”

Steve grins, charmed by the phrasing. James smiles back, expression as unbothered as his tone. Whatever his dynamic with Romanova, it’s clear he’s comfortable in it. Steve’s not unfamiliar. He remembers having the same kind of casually acidic banter with–

With–

Someone. A S.H.I.E.L.D agent, probably. But he doesn’t have a name or even a face to go with the vague concept in his head. They had dark hair. A bright smile. Like James. But that’s all he remembers.

His memory is like this sometimes. Everything after the Erskine Experiment is perfectly clear, like a high-definition video, but the times before are blurry, and the farther back it is, the harder it gets to retrieve details. He remembers that his first girlfriend had dark curls, but he can’t remember the color of her eyes. He knows he shared a bed with a boy a year older for a decade, but he can’t remember his name.

Cool metal touches his face. Steve doesn’t start, but he does go very still. When he focuses his gaze, James is peering at him with his face furrowed in concern. For a man who came across as cold and untouchable for the first three-quarters of their acquaintance, James has turned out to be a creature of warm emotions.

“I’m fine,” Steve lies in answer to the unspoken question.

Then, he hesitates.

James doesn’t move as Steve leans closer, calmly letting Steve into his space, body language open and welcoming. Their bodies are close enough to be a pale imitation of an embrace as Steve places his lips to James’s ear and speaks, in a voice low enough that none of the bugs potentially lining the Quinjet will be able to pick it up.

“Did it affect your memory? The serum.”

Steve’s heart is in his throat after he asks. It’s not something he talks about, not after those first few weeks of grueling experiments where he was poked and prodded and occasionally cut open by scientists wearing white coats and faux smiles. Steve endured because he understood why they needed the data, but it’s not a time he ever wants to revisit again.

But James is different. James is like him.

And judging by the sudden tension in his body, the question is as sensitive to him as it is to Steve, maybe more.

“You don’t have to answer,” Steve says, still pressed close to him. He slides a hand into James’s hair, careful not to disturb his meticulous braid. “It did for me. That’s all.”

James huffs, and Steve can’t tell whether it’s amusement or something else. But some of the tension leeches out of his body, and he slumps a little on Steve. Maybe it’s not much compared to the vulnerability James showed when he allowed Steve to take him apart and put him back together, but this – the weight of James pressing in on Steve – feels like a trust far more fragile than James’s cocky seduction and unbridled sexuality. Steve wants so bad to be worthy of it.

“Yes,” James whispers, as quiet as Steve was. “I don’t remember very well from before. I barely remember the fall. They tell me it’s the head injury.”

Steve swallows. He turns their quasi embrace into a real one, and it’s not very comfortable hugging James when they’re both armed and clad in their suits, but James shifts and settles into it with a sigh, and Steve decides that he’d stay just like this even if he had a knife sticking through his stomach.

“The experiment almost killed me first. Too much, I guess. Fried my brain. The serum fixed it a bit, once it started working. I do remember the things from before. But it’s not very clear. Half are things I read on my file, once they let me out.”

James doesn’t offer any empty platitudes. Steve is thankful for that, likes him better too, though god knows he doesn’t need to get any more attached to this man.

They stay like that for a while, wrapped up in each other. James is the first to pull away, and Steve lets him, though James is quick to slide his hand into Steve once they’re both settled back in their seats as they should be. Steve squeezes his hand gratefully, eyeing James’s soft smile, feeling his belly flutter each time.

-

The first place they hit is an abandoned laboratory.

There are two kind of ‘abandoned’ that Steve runs into on S.H.I.E.L.D’s behalf. The first sort’s benign enough – places that were left behind as the people moved onto better, brighter facilities. The second kind, on the other hand, wears its histories in bloodstains and a stench that time can’t quite erase.

This is one of the latter. There has been quite the increase in them after the Decimation.

“This is their birthplace?” James asks. Steve glances over at him, jealous of the air filter on his mask. “Don’t blame them for turning out the way they did.”

Romanova snorts.

“I wish their teenage rebellion had less of a body count,” she says. “We don’t even have anyone to interrogate.”

“Can’t say I blame them,” Steve chips in mildly.

It still gets him twin flat stares.

“What?”

“Not very Captain America of you,” James says, and Steve doesn’t need to see his mouth to know he’s grinning.

“Fuck you,” he returns easily. “So sue me, I’m morally opposed to human experimentation, and yes, I’m well aware of the irony.”

James shakes his head, eyes crinkled tellingly, doesn’t pursue it further. Romanova stares at him for a beat longer, and Steve can’t read a single thing on her face. She looks away, and he subtly lets out a long breath.

There’s a difference, as far as Steve is concerned, between what he did and what was done to the twins. They both volunteered, and they both did it for good reasons, but S.H.I.E.L.D did what it had to save his life and left it at that. The people who had the twins – and their organization doesn’t even have a conveniently ominous name – did more than just give them powers. They turned them into human lab rats, kept them prisoners for years. So many lines crossed.

It's been three years since the Decimation was reversed. The twins escaped three years ago. Steve’s not unaware of the implications of that. None of them are, but there’s a sort of resigned exhaustion to the messes resulting from Thanos’s bullshit in the intelligence community. Steve understands.

They split up soon, and Steve creeps through dusty rooms with rust-colored stains on the wall, fighting the urge to hold his breath. It’s not just the stench of death. He’s used to that, sadly enough. But ever since the Decimation, the air in some places have acquired a particular scent that puts his teeth on edge. The few times he mentioned it to people, all he got was blank, slightly uncomfortable stares, so he stopped talking about it. That doesn’t mean he has become any less attuned to the smell – the opposite, if anything.

He doesn’t find much of anything. The computers are all wrecked, inside and out. He sorts through the paper files and grabs the few that seems useful. He works methodically through the area he assigned himself and then goes to help James.

He finds him soon enough. Steve steps through a doorway and almost runs into a broad back.

“James?”

There’s no indication that he heard Steve. James is still, eerily so.

Steve gingerly steps around him, one hand close to his knife, just in case. He doesn’t want to hurt James, but he’s prepared for the consequences of accidentally startling the guy. But James doesn’t so much as twitch at Steve’s presence. He doesn’t even seem to have noticed him, still as a statue and staring straight ahead. When Steve reluctantly pries his eyes off James’s face to follow his stare, he almost understands the reaction.

They’re cages.

Sure, there are no iron bars or monstrous shackles. It’s an open space, divided into neat halves, with cots lined on either side of the divider with perfect symmetry. There’s a sink and toilet on the sides opposite to the cots. The wall, the sheets, the toilets—they all used to be white once. There is not even a hint of privacy. Everything would have been laid bare to the people watching.

Sterile, impersonal cages.

Revulsion bubbles up inside him.

He turns back to James, who’s still staring at the cages with furrowed brows.

“James.”

“He won’t hear you.”

Romanova’s voice makes him start. Steve’s knife is in hand as his head whips towards the sound of her voice, and he apologizes softly as he returns it to its sheath. She remains unperturbed, eyes intent on James.

“Touch him,” she says in that gruff, succinct way she has. “It helps.”

“Shouldn’t it be you? He’d be more familiar.”

Her mouth quirks at the corner, but the smile doesn’t do anything to soften her expression.

“I would say you two are familiar enough. Touch him.”

Steve obeys.

He’s hesitant when reaching out. But James doesn’t take a swing or stick a knife in him, not even when Steve’s hand clamps down on his right shoulder. Instead, he drags in a deep breath, body trembling under the touch.

“James,” Steve calls again, stepping closer, within hugging—and stabbing—distance now. “Hey, pal.”

He’s floundering, no doubt about that. But the sound of his voice seems to finally penetrate. He steps in front of James, blocking his view to the cages, and puts his other hand on James’s shoulder.

James blinks. His eyes flit over Steve’s face and seems to see him.

“James. You with me?”

James nods curtly. It’s at least half a lie; there’s a glaze to his eyes, and his stare flits from Steve’s face to his chest to the shield at his back as if he’s seeing it all for the first time. His frown becomes more pronounced.

But he backs up a step, and Steve lets him go.

“You two go back to the jet,” Romanova says. “I’ll finish up here.”

Steve opens his mouth to object. He should stay behind. Romanova is more suited to helping James, but she shakes her head before he can. She nods at James, and Steve looks at him again, unsettled to find him just standing there, looking blankly down at his feet. It’s not like him not to chip in with his opinion. Even when Steve and he were distant coworkers for a single mission, he wasn’t shy about giving his input.

“You’re done, yes, Steve?” Romanova asks.

He nods reluctantly.

“Me too,” she says. “Not much left. Go.”

She doesn’t once look away from him, her stare bright and intent like she’s trying to convey something without words. Steve glances from her to James’s vacant stare and comes to a foolish, entirely emotional decision.

“I’m counting on you,” he tells her, and even though he barely knows her and the Red Room is a tentative ally at best, he means it.

“Don’t worry, Captain,” she says, smiling, the expression more genuine than any she’s seen so far. “Us Widows are only a threat if we’re your enemies.”

That’s the problem, Steve thinks but doesn’t say. She moves out of sight, and then it’s just Steve and James, who’s standing a few feet away, quiet and still like a puppet with its strings cut.

-

Getting James back to the Quinjet is easy. He follows Steve’s instructions and guiding touches without even a whisper of resistance, which is honestly worrying. Steve stands there, feeling more than a little useless, as James stares up at him with eyes that aren’t as lifeless as before but contain none of the spark he has come to expect from those bright blues.

Even as Steve was leading him out of the lab and back here, he alternated between staring blankly at nothing and staring intently at Steve, and that’s no less concerning than anything else about this. Steve’s used to James looking at him with unmistakable intent, but this is a different kind of regard.

Steve drags in a generous gulp of air and lets it out before dropping to his knees in front of James, who tracks the motion without curiosity. He also allows the hand that Steve places on his cheek, though he doesn’t tilt his face into it the way he usually does.

“James,” Steve calls softly. “Are you alright?”

This time, James speaks.

“Functionality is optimum.”

Ice slithers down Steve’s spine.

Something about the phrasing cracks open a cold chasm inside him. The uneasiness that wraps its chilly fingers around the core of him isn’t unobtrusive, can’t be pushed aside. It writhes inside him, black and live.

Steve takes James’s face between both of his hands. He doesn’t know whether or not he’s imagining the brief tightening of James’s jaw.

“James. Look at me.”

James was already looking, but at Steve’s words, his eyes sharpen, narrowing on him with newfound intensity. There’s still none of their usual warmth and a whole lot of wariness, but James is present and he’s not pushing Steve away, and Steve will take that for now.

“Good, that’s good, sweetheart.” The endearment slips out without conscious thought, but Steve doesn’t regret it. “Do you know me?”

There are long, dragging seconds where Steve is certain that the answer will be negative. But then, something shifts in James’s cool blue gaze. He blinks, and blinks again, and his ragged exhale warms the air between them.

“Steve,” he mumbles, voice wavering on the name like he’s not quite certain it’s right.

“Yes,” Steve says quietly, urgently. “It’s me, James. Do you know where we are?”

James swallows, throat clicking dry, and doesn’t bother shaking Steve’s hands off his face as he looks around the Quinjet.

“The mission,” he murmurs, voice a note stronger. “The twins.”

Steve lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

“Yeah. That’s right, pal. We’re in Sokovia.”

“Sokovia,” James echoes. He closes his eyes. They clench tightly, eyelids crinkling. When they flash open, they’re familiar again. “Fuck. It happened, didn’t it?”

“What happened? Are you okay?”

James nods. He smiles, but it’s shaky and not very real. His hands rise to grab Steve’s gently by the wrists, and the tenderness in his grip is nothing but real.

“I’m good. Sorry about that.”

“I—no, you shouldn’t—I just don’t—”

James kisses him.

Steve falls quiet with a gasp. James is aggressive, his fingers tightening around Steve’s wrists as he kisses with his whole damn body behind it, rough and wet and dripping desperation. Steve kisses back because he knows nothing better, because the taste of James’s mouth is not something he’s strong enough to resist.

He topples backwards, and James follows, straddling Steve without breaking the messy joining of their mouths. Steve pulls his hands out of James’s grip and winds both arms around his torso, pulling him down hard against himself. James groans into their kiss, bites out something that might have been gratitude, and proceeds to kiss Steve like this is their first and last time.

Steve roughly slides a hand into James’s hair, ruining his neat braid as he grips tight, eating James’s breathless groan with a hungry noise of his own.

“Well, that works,” quips a quietly unimpressed voice.

Steve and James break apart, tension tightening James’s muscles as he turns, still straddling Steve, towards the interloper.

It’s Romanova. Who else was it going to be?

She’s leaning a hip casually against a seat as she watches the two of them with one eyebrow raised. Steve has no idea how long she’s been watching, but he trusts his senses, even with James’s mouth addling them, to know it couldn’t have been long. James lets out a breath and slumps a little, but he doesn’t climb off Steve.

Romanova shakes her head after a beat.

“I suppose it’s novel in a way. This is usually my job.”

And that’s the last word she spares for them, detaching herself from her post and sauntering into the cockpit, though not before depositing her armful of dusty files close enough to James and Steve that they start coughing.

But it’s her parting line that plagues Steve long after the coughing fit has faded.

-

He doesn’t make his unease very obvious as they hunker down for the night in yet another motel. By necessity, they pick the kind of places that won’t ask questions or remember new faces or make too much of a fuss if shit gets blown up, and that rarely bodes well for the quality of the accommodation. James and Romanova room together again; they even book the rooms, wrapped around each other like they’re just another slightly inebriated couple who intends to fuck through the night. Steve lurks in the background, watching the display curiously and imagining, a little helplessly, him and James putting on a show like that. His mind fails him. He can picture a thousand ways of fucking James, but this kind of pretense isn’t something Steve’s any good at. Sitwell likes to tell him a little too often that he’s as blunt as a sledgehammer to the nuts.

The Russians return to him, still putting on a very convincing show of being each other’s world. It is honestly impressive that they can convey so much with just the right placement of hands and the heat in their eyes. Having seen James writhe with real pleasure, Steve can spot the flaws in his façade. He can’t do the same with Romanova. She’s very convincing, but this sort of raw physicality from her makes him uncomfortable when he’s become used to her quiet, cool personality.

Like Steve told James, he’s not a spy and was never crafted as one.

All the same, he is grateful for their ruse. It gives him an excuse to grab his key and escape before it’s time for them to drop it.

In his room, Steve spreads some of the files on the floor and sits cross-legged against the wall. He tries to focus, but between the swathes of utterly useless information and the compelling thoughts tugging at his mind, it’s a doomed attempt.

He lets his head thud gently against the wall and lets out a deep, frustrated breath.

Does he really think James is pulling a honeypot? Romanova just seemed to be joking. But he can’t quite shake off his misgivings.

James told him outright, all those months ago, that he wanted to fuck Steve because he had the serum, not because the Red Room gave him a secondary assignment. Steve believed him then, and he’ll probably believe James if he says so again, which is fucking stupid and really, the smartest thing for Steve to do would be to avoid that entire conversation, but he knows himself too well to know that will happen.

A more pressing concern is the incident with the cages. Romanova made it clear that James’s strange reaction happened often enough for her to have a decent idea what to do during and afterwards. James, once they settled in for the flight, simply acted as if nothing was wrong, though Steve didn’t miss the probing glances he shot Steve when he thought Steve wasn’t looking.

Steve’s always looking. He can’t seem to help it.

But he admits he was avoiding James in the Quinjet too, sorting through the files and offering to relieve Romanova for the last leg of the flight, all in stark contrast to the way he and James spent the trip to the lab. He doesn’t think it was very obvious, what he was doing, but he’s dealing with spies, so he doesn’t know what they saw.

He spends a good half an hour chasing his thoughts in circles before he gets up, splashes cold water on his face, and goes back to the files. His concentration fares better this time, but there’s still not a lot that’s useful. About a decade ago, he’d have wondered why they were hunting the twins now, three years after their escape. But back then, the world wasn’t reeling from the Decimation and the Resurrection. They all got very good at prioritizing. It’s only now that the twins are making a nuisance of themselves to S.H.I.E.L.D and other agencies, but their intentions and motivations are as opaque as these files.

Steve determinedly goes through stack after stack. He absorbs every useless tidbit because his mind cannot opt out of serum-induced eidetic memory, and by the time he’s done, he’s tired in a way that has nothing to do with his body.

The knock comes at around midnight, and Steve can’t even say he wasn’t expecting it.

“Come in,” he calls.

James opens the door and enters with soft footsteps. He locks the door behind him but doesn’t move closer, leaning on it instead. Slightly narrowed eyes meet Steve’s, their color closer to grey than blue in this light. Steve’s hand itches for paints and a canvas, not for the first time.

“James,” he greets. “What is it?”

James’s eyes narrow further. Steve wasn’t as subtle as he thought he was, then.

The silence lasts for a few more minutes. When James speaks, his tone is one Steve has never heard before, midway between the detached professionalism of their earlier days and the effusive warmth he has become used to.

“I do not like games, Steve.”

“James—”

James holds up a hand, and Steve falls silent because it’s James and he was right when he thought he wouldn’t let himself avoid this conversation.

“I don’t like men who play them either,” James continues, looking Steve in the eye, brave and beautiful. “And I do not give second chances. But I am here anyway. Because you—you pulled me out of it. Not many can without putting me to sleep. Only Natasha. And now you.”

“Putting you to sleep?” Steve asks, caught on that peculiar phrase.

James’s mouth quirks into something that’s not quite a smile.

“That’s the kindest way of wording it. Slamming my head into a wall works just as well.”

Steve flinches, but James resumes talking before he can voice his outrage.

“You helped me with that, and you were…kind, when I returned. So I want to thank you. And clarify, I suppose.”

“Clarify what?”

“Whether your sudden distance is because you’ve seen that I am—how do you phrase it? Ah, yes. Damaged goods.”

Steve’s stunned to silence but not for long.

“What? No! James, _no_. That’s not—”

He scrambles to his feet. James watches him curiously, every other emotion locked up tight. Romanova does that terrifyingly well on a regular basis but on James, it just makes Steve worry because something tells him that this control comes with a cost.

“That’s not it,” he says finally, inadequately.

“You are saying you haven’t been keeping your distance since my…incident,” James says, the words dripping disbelief, and in his defense, Steve can see how he came to that conclusion.

“I’ve been keeping my distance since Romanova implied that you were sleeping with me on orders.”

James’s poker face crumples like a house of cards in a hurricane, sheer shock taking its place. That immediate incredulity makes Steve relax and take a few steps forward until he’s in the middle of the small room.

“We already had this conversation,” James says, managing somehow to be simultaneously mild and scathing.

“I know.” Steve doesn’t look away from James’s eyes, not for a second. “But the stakes are higher now. She knows. And I don’t know how thorough either of your mission reports are.”

“Did you tell S.H.I.E.L.D that you fucked me until I bled?”

A single raised eyebrow accompanies the question, and Steve, inexplicably, blushes. He scrubs ineffectually at the heat on his cheeks.

“No. Did you tell the Red Room?”

“No,” James answers drily. “Neither has Natasha. Her comment was a joke. But that’s not convincing enough for you, is it?”

Steve knew it would come to this point, and he knew he would be foolish when it did. But painful self-awareness doesn’t change anything.

“It is,” he says, completely honest and resigned about it. “All I need is your word, James. Nothing else.”

James’s expression is uncertain for a moment before it turns skeptical. He pins Steve with a piercing gaze, almost a glare, but whatever he finds on Steve’s face makes it morph into wide-eyed disbelief.

“Just like that,” he says. “You doubt me, a Red Room operative, and all you need to make it go away is my own guarantee.”

Steve shrugs.

“Yes.”

“You can’t tell me you trust that easily,” James says, lips pursed into nonexistence. 

“Not really. But I trust you.”

“That’s very foolish, Steve,” James sighs. He smiles, but it wavers at the edges like he doesn’t really want to. “I’m not a very trustworthy man.”

“Yeah, well. Make an exception for me, won’t you?”

It’s not very smooth and doesn’t even make much sense. But James stalks across the room until he’s all up in Steve’s space and pulls him into a hard, violent kiss that makes Steve’s toes curl.

“You confuse the fuck out of me,” James bites out when they part, the harried rush of his words reminding Steve oddly of himself.

“Part of my charm,” Steve says breathlessly, the whole of him thrumming with wild energy.

James’s eyes narrow like he’s got a thing or two to say about that, but Steve takes his face between his hands, fingers smoothing over the soft give of his cheeks before sliding further up, into the silky strands of his unbound hair. James makes a soft, pleased noise when Steve’s nails scrape his scalp and tilts his head backwards, rubbing against Steve’s hands like a cat.

It’s distracting, but Steve manages to summon his focus from the James-shaped hole it vanished to.

“What was that though? PTSD?”

James stops his feline behavior with a sigh, though he does scrunch up his face when Steve shifts the positioning of his hands to James’s shoulders so he’ll be less of a distraction.

“Maybe,” James says. “I don’t know.”

He looks down, expression thoughtful, and Steve waits, absently stroking his thumbs over James’s soft t-shirt.

“They’re…reveries. I don’t know what triggers them. It’s been something different each time. I don’t know where I go, what I think of. I don’t even know what’s happening until they’re over. Natasha says I shut down.”

His phrasing reminds Steve of the first words he got James to say.

“When I asked if you were okay, you said—you said your functionality was optimum.”

James grimaces but doesn’t seem surprised.

“Natasha also says I act more like machine than man when I go under,” he says softly, mouth curved up like he’s amused but eyes devoid of anything resembling humor. “I am sorry you had to see that.”

“No. Don’t apologize, James, that’s not fair to you.”

James gives him a slow blink and a hard stare that Steve doesn’t quite know what to do with.

“You are okay now?” Steve asks.

“More or less. I don’t like losing time.”

“I’m sorry. That sounds terrifying.”

James’s eyes soften. He reaches up, metal fingers curving around the side of Steve’s neck, and he can’t bring himself to care about how James could easily crush his throat with that hand, not when the gentleness of the touch sends warmth seeping into his ribs.

“I’m used to them. The serum, likely. As I said, Zola did not quite know what he was doing. I think he focused too much on the body and left little concern for the mind.”

“Mad scientists,” Steve says, grimacing. “All the same in the end.”

James laughs.

“Truly.” He kisses Steve, chaste this time, their lips brushing softly. “Thank you, Steve.”

“C’mon, I didn’t do much.”

But James shakes his head.

“You made me hear you. You do not know how rare that is. Only—well, it is only Natasha who can reach me, and she has been with me for as long as I can remember. But you—you terrify me.”

Steve startles at that, but James’s grip on him tightens reassuringly, and he pushes his whole body closer to Steve.

“In a good way,” James says. “A man could get to like you too much, Captain.”

“It’s Steve,” he reminds gently, lowering his head to rest it on James’s. “You know, if this were a honeypot, you’d have such an easy job.”

 _Me too_ , he’s saying without quite echoing James’s words. This could get messy so fast, and messy is quick to turn into tragic for people like them. But James only laughs, a rough, pleasing sound.

“You are obsessed with that,” he says, amusement warring with exasperation in his voice. “I can suggest a few other things to occupy your time, Steve.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“Me.”

James smirks and pushes at his chest, and Steve lets the force of it pry them apart. James stalks forward, and Steve backs away with a smile of his own, right until his knees hit the bed. He sits down hard, and James wastes no time crawling into his lap.

They kiss, sweet for a second before it turns wet and deep. Steve twines James’s hair around one fist and licks the answering groan from between his teeth. He jerks James’s head back and loves the way he goes wild at the first touch of Steve’s mouth to his pounding pulse. He bites a necklace of bruises on James, addicted to the sight of all that pale skin blooming pink and red.

He swipes his thumb along a particularly livid mark, and James chuckles, used by now to Steve’s proclivities and far from complaining.

Steve pours him into the bed and pins him there with his body, in love with the way James goes heavy-lidded and soft when he’s held down like this.

“What do you want?” Steve asks, dragging his nose up the curve of James’s throat.

“Everything,” James answers, laughing, a little out of control. “I’d let you do anything to me.”

Tall words, but there’s a feverish brightness to James’s eyes that say he might mean them more than any sane man would. It goes right to Steve’s cock, gets him grinding down, but it’s not enough, even the thin material of their nightwear too much of a barrier between him and the heat of James’s skin.

“Careful,” Steve warns, punctuating it with a bite on James’s collar. “Pretty thing like you, there’s a lot I want to do.”

James shivers, cheeks and ears a soft pink. Steve follows the color with his mouth, breathing deep against the flush like he can suck in all that warmth, take James deep into himself, keep him tucked away in his ribs, safe from anyone who’d take him from Steve.

The thought startles him more than a little. It’s too possessive, too vicious, too unlike Steve, but before he can react beyond a moment of stillness, James speaks.

“Anything,” he promises.

“Even I want to eat you right up?” Steve can’t help asking.

James lets out a sharp, shuddering breath.

“Yeah,” he chokes out, breathtakingly sincere.

Steve kisses him hard enough that their lips bleed, and he licks at the warm copper taste until it’s just James on his tongue. He sits back on his heels, and James follows him up, hands reaching like he can’t bear to let Steve out of his grasp. Steve strips him of his shirt and takes his own off too, but pants take more maneuvering, and they have no choice but to separate.

James is on him the instant they’re naked, folding his great bulk into Steve like a man much smaller might try. Steve understands the impulse; there are times when he wants to burrow into James, reduce his hulking body into something James can hold in the gap between two ribs.

He presses James into the mattress, trying to crawl into his skin through sheer force of will. James gasps like he wants nothing more.

“Lube,” he manages to say, prying his swollen mouth away from Steve overeager teeth. “I need it, need you, Steve–”

“Ssh,” Steve soothes, peppering sweet kisses all along James’s face. “Under the pillow.”

James retrieves it automatically, but he hands it to Steve with both eyebrows high on his forehead. Steve shrugs, offering James a sheepish smile.

“Had a feeling I might need it.”

“Were you expecting me to come along and convince you I’m not fucking you for love of Mother Russia?”

Steve snorts, amused despite himself.

“Something like that,” he agrees. “Or maybe I just knew better than to overestimate my self-control.”

James looks pleased and leans in for a kiss that makes Steve forget his own name.

“You promised me anything,” he murmurs against James’s mouth, a small eternity later, dazed and drunk on the taste of him.

“Yes, fuck, yes.”

Steve sinks his teeth into the edge of James’s jaw, pressing down firmly when James arches up under him.

“Don’t come,” Steve says. “Not until I say you can.”

For a few seconds, James’s expression is dazed and uncomprehending. Then, it sinks in and his eyes widen, the desire etched in pink on his cheeks turning a deep, flaming red.

“Can you do that for me, James?” Steve asks, affection and sheer, burning want curling in his chest when James’s eyes flutter helplessly.

“Yes,” James says, and he sounds wrecked already.

“Good,” Steve says, lowering his torso until it’s parallel to James’s. He kisses the tip of a pert nipple. “So good for me, James.”

He closes his mouth over the dark bud and James hisses Steve’s name. The sound breaks into a whimper when Steve _bites_. He doesn’t tease James too long, but he does linger on the firm swell of his pectorals, mouthing at the sensitive skin and sucking his nipples into raw, red peaks. He drags his mouth away, taking pity at the pleading edge to James’s whines. The taut muscles of James’s abdomen jump when Steve’s teeth graze the edge of his belly button, and the guttural groan that slips past him when Steve licks a dirty stripe down the entire length of his cock is the sweetest thing. Steve suckles at the head for a moment, and he’s tempted to test James like this, see how long he can last when he’s trapped in the wet heat of Steve’s mouth.

But he has better plans.

He kneels between James’s spread legs and slicks up his fingers, grinning when James eyes the motion hungrily.

“James,” Steve calls softly, and lust-dark eyes snap to his own. “What do you tell me, when you want me to stop?”

A ragged exhale is his initial answer.

“What are you going to do to me?” James asks, and Steve can’t place his tone, but it’s a trembling little thing that sends a bolt of heat to his cock.

“Anything I want,” Steve says, smiling as he slips two fingers into James. “Isn’t that what you promised me?”

The words have their intended effect. James’s eyes roll back, and he bites his lips, pearly white digging into pretty pink.

“Snowfall,” James says. And whatever Steve’s expression is, it makes him add, “I don’t much like the cold.”

It’s none of Steve’s business, so he doesn’t prod further.

“Me neither,” he says. He twists his fingers, and James gasps. “You’re warm.”

James laughs, but the sound turns into a high-pitched whine when Steve thrusts a third finger into him, too fast and too rough. James can take it, he can take so much, body opening up like a dream.

Steve pulls his fingers out and spreads the lube generously over his cock. James shudders into motion, turning over so he’s poised on hands and knees. Steve lays a hard smack on one, plump cheek, and James just groans and arches into it in silent invitation. Steve takes him up on it, for a few seconds at least. He gets both cheeks a nice, pink color, the marks mild enough to fade by the time they’re done.

“More,” James demands, sticking his ass out, beautifully obscene.

“Slut for pain,” Steve says fondly and doesn’t miss the tremor that traverses through James. “Not tonight, sweetheart. I’ve got other plans for you.”

James whines a little but doesn’t complain all that much. It’s clear enough, by this point, that the one thing he likes as much as Steve hurting him is Steve ordering him around, using James for his pleasure.

He squeezes both of James’s cheeks in reward, the grip hard enough to leave the shape of his fingers imprinted on the marked skin. James breaths come as shaky pants, and his cock steadily drips precome on the sheets.

Steve spreads him wide and fucks into him.

James clenches tight, sucking Steve in, hot and hungry. Steve bottoms out in a savage rush and stays like that, catching his breath and wrestling with the part of him that wants to just slam in deep and _take_ until he spirals over the edge. He could, James would let him, he would love it with his body and his heart, but Steve has other, dearly loved plans for this man.

He gets himself under control and runs a hand up James’s sweaty back, fingers dragging up the length of his spine. It’s a nail that retraces the same path downwards, and James’s entire body shudders violently.

“Here’s the rule,” Steve says, barely recognizing his own voice. “You can come after I have. Not a second before. Yes?”

James throws him a grin over his shoulder, confidence shining even through his pleasure-drunk expression. It’s echoed in his simple affirmative. Of course he thinks this will be easy, given past experience.

Steve was counting on that.

He takes it easy, fucks James easy. It’s good. It can’t not be good when James is wet and burning around his dick. His is a body Steve wants to make a home in; it would be so sweet to burrow into his heat and his warmth, live there forever. 

He settles into a slow, steady rhythm, hands roving over James’s tensed thighs and heaving back as Steve slides in and out of him without any of the animal savagery that overtook him each time he fucked James before. It's no surprise that James grows impatient—always a matter of when, not if. And it’s good, the sudden, violent motions of James’s body as his hips snap back, driving himself back into Steve’s cock, damn near impaling himself as all that considerable strength is turned towards crafting a brutal pace.

Steve lets it go on for a few thrusts, enjoying the sight of James’s bouncing cheeks and the constricting heat of him.

James cries out when Steve buries himself to the hilt, but Steve cuts the sound short with a hand fisted in James’s hair, yanking his head back into a sharp, merciless angle. His puts his other hand flat between James’s shoulder-blades, a brief warning before he pushes him down. James’s hands give in after a second of resistance, and his body collapses, still tight around Steve’s cock, and James lets out a pained grunt before Steve shifts the grip on his hair to accommodate the new position.

“You’re going to lie there,” Steve tells him, tugging on James’s hair to emphasize his point, “and you’re going to take what I give you. Or you’re not coming tonight, James. I’m just going fuck you and leave you like this, aching and fucking desperate. You get me?”

He shakes James when his answer’s not prompt enough.

“Da,” James yelps, voice high and gutted. “Da, yes, _yes_ , please, yes.”

Steve relaxes his grip and digs his fingers into James’s abused scalp, gently massaging the area. James’s answering whimpers doesn’t seem to know whether to be relieved or worried.

“That’s my guy,” Steve croons and resumes moving.

James doesn’t even try to get his arms back under him, settling fully into the sheets as he listens to Steve and lets himself be fucked at a slow, maddening pace. He’s enjoying it well enough; a quick grope between his legs shows that his dick’s dripping into the sheets. Steve rubs his thumb against the exposed head and grins when James whines weakly.

Steve lets go of him with just one teasing stroke because he’s nice like that and slaps that hand on James’s pretty ass in time to the inward thrust of his cock, satisfaction simmering in his gut when James tightens like a vice around him.

It’s shockingly easy after that to shove his own pleasure away and focus on breaking James without the unbridled violence of their serum-enhanced strength to ease the way.

Steve pulls out, gently hushing James’s protesting shout.

“Turn around,” he says and flips James around before he even reacts to the command.

James blinks up at him with wide, wild eyes, their pale blue-grey reduced to a thin circle at the edges of his pupils. Steve grabs a fistful of hair, addicted to how James’s thick, soft hair fills up the hollow of his palm, and yanks him into a kiss that he doesn’t do more than pant open-mouthed into. Steve takes advantage, licks inside hungrily, loving the way James moans sweetly for him.

The noise that he lets escape when Steve shoves him back down and slides roughly into him is even sweeter.

Like this, he can see James’s eyes glaze over each time Steve’s cockhead tugs at him rim, can see the aborted twitches of his hand towards his poor, neglected cock. Steve gives the pretty thing another, slow stroke and gets drunk on the graceless arch of James’s body.

It catches James off-guard, he can tell. Not the pleasure, not even the pace of it, but his reaction to it. Steve doesn’t miss how he tries to wrench out of his daze, only to give up when Steve’s cock brushes his prostate and slides in so deep that his mouth drops open with it. And there’s nothing subtle about the sharp cruelty with which James’s fingers dig into whatever bits of his own flesh he can reach, momentary attempts at controlling himself.

“Don’t,” Steve says, stilling inside James and using one hand to pin both of James’s, aware he can break out of it and proud that he doesn’t even try. “Let go, James. I’ve got you.”

James just gasps, half-gone already.

He’s different like this, with none of the mad writhing of when Steve is ramming into him with wild abandon. This reminds him, instead, of that night all those months ago, of lying with James’s back curved against his chest, breathing into his hair while he brought James off with his hands and slid between his thighs for his own pleasure.

Steve likes both, likes _everything_ James gives him, but god, he’s helpless against the wave of possessive contentment that washes over him when he sees James melt around his cock, this sweet, dark-eyed thing of mindless pleasure.

He slows his thrusts more, buried to the hilt and rocking gently, body bowed over James’s. He drags his mouth up James’s throat, licks at the sweat gathered on his flushed skin, and swallows James’s soft whine with his lips. It’s a clumsy kiss; James tries, but it seems to be all he can do to breathe, and Steve’s not so controlled that he can stay buried in James’s clenching heat and not lose his head a little.

He could just let go, fuck in the way he’s aching to, and make James come too, but he doesn’t, waiting for a vague something.

James gives it to him.

“Please,” he says, voice soft and slurred, “S’eve, S-Steve.”

“Yeah,” Steve murmurs against James’s jaw. “You wanna come, honey?”

James keens, high and helpless, and it’s telling that he doesn’t even reach for Steve, just weakly clenches his fists against the pillow above his head. It’s a holy sight, makes Steve weak at the knees, and he has to still for a moment, pleasant trapped in James, by him.

He stays like that for a few seconds, but James is panting raggedly, eyes shut and head turned to the side like he just can’t take it, and Steve’s only human.

He pulls out, whimpering right alongside James as those wet, searing muscles grip his cock like they want to pull him back inside, and that instant of separation, of being severed from James’s inviting warmth, is torture. He pushes back, soft at first from some semblance of control, before James’s next breath comes out in a broken sob and shatters it.

Steve fucks him, fast and single-minded, gritting his teeth as the heat inside him roars into a beast.

He comes deep inside James with a thrust that makes the limp body under him jolt and tighten. White bursts under his clenched eyelids, and Steve somehow manages to wrap his hand around James’s wet cock, gritting out, “Come, come for me,” and James does, breaking apart with a soft, sobbing cry of Steve’s name.

Steve just barely keeps his weight off James after his orgasm leaves him shaking and wrung-out. He’s oddly reluctant to pull out, eager to stay just like this, buried in James’s limp body as Steve’s come trickles out from around his softening cock. He could go again if he tried, probably, but he feels no urge to. He’s content, buried in the mess he made while James’s come cools on his hand.

But they have to separate eventually. Steve hisses as he slips free of James’s body and is gratified by James’s half-closed eyes and pouting mouth.

Steve leans out of bed to grab one of their t-shirts and uses it to clean them both up, best as he can. He doesn’t want to leave James, wants to meld their bodies together, and James seems to be of the same mind, grasping Steve’s arm with shaking fingers and pulling him close. Steve curls around James, skin flush to skin, arms and legs entwined. He kisses the back of James’s neck and feels more alive than when he has his shield singing at his fingertips.

And that’s terrifying but damn if he cares.


	3. i remember blue skies (i remember how you were sitting under starshine, ever-bright)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve’s in a dance hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find my tumblr – here!.

“Hey, soldier.”

“No, no—”

_Ssh. It’s okay, Captain. Sleep._

-

Steve’s in a dance hall.

It’s crowded, men and women dressed in old-fashioned clothes milling about. Steve hears their laughter and sees their happy eyes and edges farther and farther away, filled with a strange, gnawing terror at the sight of suspenders and victory curls.

He bumps into someone, and they ignore him.

Everyone ignores him. He’s alone is throng of unfamiliar faces, and it makes his heart pound.

Steve’s in a dance hall, and he doesn’t know how he got here.

-

“ _No_ –”

_You’re a fighter, even now. Very well then._

-

Steve’s in a dance hall.

There are grinning men in old-fashioned uniforms and laughing women tangled in their arms. He doesn’t know their faces. Some of their eyes meet, and they smile at him, and Steve backs away with a racing pulse and clammy skin. Red-painted lips and sharp olive creases turn to follow him.

His eyes catch on some of the faces. A reed-thin woman in the corner with wispy blonde hair and a set jaw. The man at the table with twinkling eyes and a bar mustache.

His head burns.

-

Someone’s screaming.

_Okay, okay, ssh, shit, this isn’t—back to the original. Captain, please, sleep._

-

“Hey, soldier.”

Steve whips around. He’s in a dance hall, and he doesn’t know how he got here, and there’s a man lounging by the bar, grinning at him from under a tilted cap. He’s clad in a uniform from a bygone era, and Steve can’t take his eyes off him.

A name drifts through the lazy fog of his thoughts.

“James.”

The man’s grin widens.

“A rose by any other name.”

He saunters close. Steve stumbles back a step. Then another and another, one for each step the man takes towards him. The crowd parts around them, like water flowing around a stone plunging to the riverbed.

His feet freeze in the middle of the hall. The crowd mills around, red-painted lips and olive uniforms and suspenders and victory curls. They ignore Steve, but there’s an empty circle of space around him. James steps into it with that wide, pleasant grin still stretching his lips.

Steve tries to focus. James, he knows James _—_

James has hair to his shoulders and ice-blue eyes and smiles with the corners of his mouth.

No _—_

James has dark hair tucked into his military hat and smiles with his whole face.

“May I have this dance?” he asks.

“What?”

There’s a song playing, he realizes. Slow and sad. He can’t make out the lyrics.

The crowd roars suddenly, and Steve flinches closer to James as they erupt into cheers and shrieked laugher. He stares uncomprehending at their boisterous bodies and back at James, who’s watching Steve with an indulgent expression.

“What’s happening?”

“They’re celebrating,” James says easily, and he’s so close now. Steve can see the pores on his skin. “What about that dance, soldier?”

Steve looks down at himself and realizes he’s a dress uniform too, with stripes on his shoulders that aren’t familiar but feel like they should be.

A hand creeps into his. James’s left hand in his right. Warm flesh tangles with his own.

It tugs him forward, and Steve goes. Lets James draw Steve’s hand around his waist. Doesn’t flinch at the touch on his shoulder. He can feel James breathe, the warmth of his breath and the swell of his chest.

“Celebrating what?” Steve whispers.

“We won,” James murmurs, soft and intimate. “We can finally go home, Steve.”

“I _—_ ”

“Ssh,” James says. He kisses Steve. Steve lets him. “Dance with me.”

Steve looks at the crowd.

There’s no crowd.

There’s no dance hall.

Steve’s in a forest, and there’s snow on the ground, and there’s a blue-eyed boy in his arms.

James steps back, and Steve follows, and they shuffle around awkwardly. James never stops grinning. His eyes are bright and there’s snow dusting his hair. His cap’s gone. There’s no drab uniform on him anymore. The blue of his jacket makes Steve’s breath catch.

The music’s still playing.

“What did we win?” Steve makes himself ask.

James’s smile doesn’t waver.

“The war,” he says. “They won, Steve.”

James kisses him.

Steve licks at his lips and tastes ash.

Steve’s on a mountain, and there’s snow in his hair, and the blue-eyed boy in his arms turns to dust.

-

He wakes screaming.

Something slams into him.

Steve throws a punch blindly, and it connects with something hard. He kicks out, and the weight holding him down rolls off him with a grunt. Steve scrambles away, rising gracelessly to his feet.

It’s disorienting. He doesn’t know where he is and a frantic look around shows grey walls and multicolored containers off to one side.

And _—_

James, kneeling on the floor, metal fingers digging gouges into the concrete while his flesh arm clutches a fistful of hair. It clicks into place, then, the sudden attack and the equally sudden disengagement.

“James?”

Steve flinches when the name leaves his lips, images of snow-capped mountains and dancing in a green forest flashing through his mind. He remembers the—the dream, but—

James groans, loud and pained, and Steve’s mind is emptied of all but concern as he rushes to his side. He stops a couple of feet away, made wary by the angry snarl of James’s face and the way he’s shaking.

“James,” Steve calls carefully. “Do you know where you are?”

There’s a grumbling sound like a growl.

“No.”

It’s so soft, a rasped breath more than a word, and it’s only Steve’s enhanced senses that let him hear it at all.

“We’re in—”

Where the fuck are they? Steve can’t remember, and he doesn’t have time to try.

“I don’t know where we are,” he admits instead. “Do you know me?”

That finally gets James to lift his head. His eyes are bloodshot like he was crying, but they’re dry and there are no tear tracks on his face. He blinks a couple of time, long lashes fluttering.

“You’re Steve.”

He sounds as wrecked as before. Steve takes a step closer and drops to his knees beside James. He’s dressed in his tac gear. They both are. There’s a reason for it, for the two of them being here, in this empty warehouse that smells like dust and disuse.

Steve tries to remember.

There was a mission.

There’s always a mission. The Twins. They’ve been chasing them for two weeks, Steve and the Russians. Lead after lead leaving them with dead ends, always another wild goose to chase.

Romanova told them the girl was sighted in Volgograd. She said this was the most solid lead they ever got.

And she was right.

“We found them,” Steve murmurs, staring his own gloved fingers spread on the ground. “The twins. We’re in Russia.”

“She fought us. The girl,” James says. He sounds a little stronger. “Scarlet Witch.”

Steve’s head throbs. Memories rise to the surface. A young woman, red in her eyes and at her fingertips. She had a sad face.

Sad eyes, sad smile, sad voice.

“Wasn’t much of a fight,” Steve says. “She tore us apart like cotton candy.”

The issue wasn’t the invisible force that sent Steve slamming into walls and red barriers that stopped James’s bullets in their tracks. Steve finally pries his gaze off his hand and looks at James, finds him crouched with his hair in his eyes.

“Did she…do it to you too?”

James tilts his head to the side, into shadows that hide his expression from Steve. He says nothing. Steve has his answer all the same.

“Romanova?”

Steve’s comm isn’t in place. James raises a shaky hand to his ear. He barks something into it. The Russian sounds oddly familiar, but Steve doesn’t know the language. He’d be irked at James for using it now, but he’s too fucking tired to care.

James’s conversation with Romanova doesn’t last long.

“She’s off chasing the Witch,” James says. He sounds distinctly displeased. “Motherfucker took the Quinjet.”

“Language,” Steve corrects half-heartedly.

James gives him a dark glare.

“She shouldn’t have—fuck, _fuck_.”

“What about us?”

James’s expression sours further.

“She said to find a room somewhere and wait. She’ll contact us.”

“Oh.”

James goes back to glowering at the ground. Steve watches him uncertainly. He blinks, and there’s another figure superimposed over James, younger and brighter.

He stands up and keeps his feet rooted through sheer, damning determination.

“Come on then,” he tells James with a cheer he doesn’t feel. “Let’s find some rooms. We can use some sleep.”

James staggers unsteadily to his feet. Steve wants to reach out and help him, but his palms burn with the memory of another pair pressed to them. He clenches his hands into fist as if to kill that ghost, but it doesn’t work. Steve’s memory is selectively flawless.

He doesn’t touch James.

James isn’t even looking at him. He’s steady now, but he’s standing with his eyes on the ground, breathing deep and even in a way that’s carefully measured. Steve aches to put his arms around him even as he’s terrified at the thought of it.

“James,” he calls softly, compromising. “Shall we go?”

It takes a few minutes before James responds.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Might as well. Ain’t doing either of us good, staying here.”

James sounds like—

Bright blue eyes meet his, and Steve forgets to breathe.

He nods. Turns on his heels.

Flees.

-

They get a double room.

They haven’t bothered with that for a while now. Romanova was the one who started it, getting two rooms and slamming her door in James’s face when he tried to follow her in. The look on his face was priceless. The sly grin that followed turned Steve’s blood to fire.

It’s unprofessional, foolish, and dangerous to boot, but he and James have spent every night together for the last two weeks, hopping from country to country chasing Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. He knows James’s body by heart—knows his skin, his scent, the sounds he makes in his sleep. He knows him like a lover would.

And that’s what they are, for all that they’ve never said the word. There’s too much emotion in their touches for it to be just sex. That’s the dangerous part, and it eats at Steve when he thinks about it. He tries not to though. He’s never been the kind to do anything easy, so he doesn’t love easy either. And he’s not saying he’s in love with James, but he knows himself, knows he could be, that he might already be falling.

That should make him stop, but it would take a man far stronger than Steve to turn down the invitation in James’s smile, to walk away from the softness in his eyes. It would be easier if it were just sex, but it never is, that’s not the way Steve’s built.

There’s none of that tonight though. No heated glances, no tender smiles. Steve’s weary down to his soul, and James looks no better. The look on his face makes the receptionist blanch, and Steve can’t summon more than a wane smile to reassure the guy. He thought he’d let James talk given that this is his home country. That might have been a mistake, but Steve’s too tired for regret.

He closes his eyes and sees bruised blue.

James makes a beeline for the bathroom once they enter the room, and Steve chokes down his annoyance and starts stripping. He does a quick inspection of the room, and it’s weird to do it naked, but he finds that he can’t be fucked to put on clothes for just a handful of minutes.

He claims the bed closest to the door as his own because some things are in his blood and waits, perched restless on the edge.

The time it takes for James to finish is both fifteen minutes and forever. He comes out of the shower naked, with a pile of clothes held gingerly away from his body, and stops short at the sight of Steve.

They hold eye contact for an electric instant. Steve looks away, doesn’t know if James does.

“S’all yours,” James mutters unnecessarily.

“Thanks,” Steve says without looking at him.

The water pressure is shit, but the hot shower does him some good. It’s hard to be convinced that there’s snow in his hair when warm water is flattening his hair into an unflattering lump. He can’t quite shut off his mind, but in a way, it’s better to let it run around in circles rather than fixate on any one thing and make it a little too real.

That lasts until he exits the bathroom and finds James standing by the window. He’s got pants own and his hair is visibly damp, hanging past his shoulders in slightly frizzy waves.

He looks nothing like the man in Steve’s…vision. He can’t imagine why Maximoff showed him that. The dance hall, the costumes, the forest, the mountain—it was nonsensical, all of it.

James grinning at Steve from under his lashes, hair short and tame under a jauntily tilted military cap. James dancing with him on the forest floor and in the snow, blue jacket bringing out the bright gleam of his eyes.

It haunts him.

He pulls on boxers and crawls into bed. James doesn’t turn around. Steve doesn’t talk to him.

He turns away, pulling the covers over his head. He thinks he hears James sigh. Steve’s not surprised sleep is aggressively elusive, but he finds it in himself to be disappointed.

It’s a long time later that he hears James settle into bed.

-

He wakes up to screaming.

Steve thinks it’s him, in that first disoriented second in the dark, but he’s moving even before the realization hits that no, it’s James who’s screaming. Steve gets the light first, knowing all too well the dangers of trying to wake James in the dark.

In those few seconds, the scream turns into a raw, terrified keening.

Steve’s heart breaks at the sound, and the hollow resolve to keep his distance until he gathers himself breaks along with it.

“James,” he calls softly, crouched in the space between their beds. “James, wake up. It’s a dream. Wake up, James.”

It doesn’t work. James is whimpering into his pillow now, what Steve can see of his face twisted into an expression of acute agony. His voice doesn’t penetrate, and Steve sits there murmuring empty platitudes, James’s breaths become sobbing gasps.

Fuck it. If Steve breaks an arm, it’ll heal, but he can’t watch this.

He touches James, puts his hand on his arm, flesh not metal, and runs it gently along the overheated skin. James’s muscles tense under the touch. He comes up swinging, and Steve throws himself out of the way with a shout of his own.

“James,” he says, taking care to keep his voice calm and non-threatening. “James, it’s me. Steve. You were having a nightmare.”

Wild blue eyes stare at him from under tangled hair.

They’re the same eyes—

No, not now.

“Steve,” James chokes out after a long, tense pause.

Steve creeps closer just as James slumps back on bed. He’s a sweaty mess, and the tension is slow to drain out of his body, but as Steve tentatively perches on the edge of his bed and runs his fingers through his hair, untangling the sweat-soaked clumps, his breathing gets easier and the furrow between his brows smoothens out.

“I am sorry I woke you,” James says, eyes half-opening to peer at Steve. “Maybe we should have taken different rooms.”

“Nonsense,” Steve snaps, surprising himself with his aversion to that idea.

Yes, it was discomfiting to look at James while his strange doppelganger from the vision plagued Steve’s mind, but he wanted him close, within sight and reach. The thought of James being in another room, more than a scream away, is—it’s not just uncomfortable. It’s genuinely scary.

Steve looks at James’s tired, bleary eyes and gracelessly blurts the truth.

“I don’t want to be that far from you.”

James makes a quiet, shocked noise, then makes an expression that says he did not want that sound to escape. Steve briefly digs his blunt nails into James’s scalp but resumes sifting through his hair without further comment. He needs James to talk next, respond somehow.

As always, James never disappoints. It would be infinitely easier if he did, but even as he thinks it, Steve knows that he doesn’t really want that.

“You could barely look at me earlier.”

“You were the same,” Steve says, as quiet and unaccusing as James.

James swallows. Steve watches his throat work and puts a hand to his pulse. The skin under his fingers trembles with the sound James makes, but Steve doesn’t snatch his hand away like he should. The pounding of James’s pulse under his touch is reassuring.

And it says something that James lets Steve put his hand on his throat and trusts him not to turn the touch into death. He could. He may or may not succeed, but he’d have a better chance than most people. Yet, James allows it. Relaxes even, sinking a little more firmly into the mattress.

“You too then,” James murmurs, barely audible. “The…dream.”

“Didn’t feel like a dream,” Steve says when he can find his voice. “Felt real.”

James shudders. It’s a subtle reaction, muscles tensing and breath shivering. But Steve is so close, eyes and hands intent on James, and he can’t not feel it. His own gut clenches in anxious sympathy.

“It did,” James agrees. “Did you see me?”

It’s very direct. James, Steve has found, is a very direct person. It makes him seem cold. It did, when they were reluctant mission partners and nothing more. But he’s not.

He’s the warmest thing Steve’s ever felt.

“I did.”

James looks briefly pained.

“I saw you.”

Steve’s not surprised, but his chest still constricts painfully. He leans in, and James lets him, and Steve lets his forehead on James’s. It helps him breathe a little easier, and when fingers slide into his hair and a hand cups the back of his neck, Steve breathes out slowly and comes to a decision.

“We danced,” he says. He doesn’t open his eyes, because he can talk or he can look at James, not both. “In a hall. A forest. A mountain. I don’t know why. You didn’t look like you.”

He hears James swallow, throat clicking dry.

“How was it different?”

“Shorter hair. You were…leaner. Younger.”

He pulls back then, because he’s weak to James and can’t help it. The face staring up at him is as beautiful as the one in his dreams, but there are stress lines on his forehead and his eyes are far older than that grinning boy’s. Steve trails a finger from James’s furrowed brow to the corner of his eyes, breath catching at the trust in James’s passive acceptance.

“What did you look like,” James asks, “before the serum?”

Steve blinks, caught off guard.

“I—pretty much the same? It affected my healing and enhanced my strength, senses. Reflexes. But I look the same.”

“You weren’t smaller?”

“You mean when I was a kid?” Steve’s well and truly confused now, but James’s expression is serious and intent, no trace of humor in it. “The serum didn’t change how I looked, no. I’ve always been a pretty big buy.”

He has vague memories of being leaner, more bone than muscle, but he doesn’t quite remember when that changed and he turned into a six-foot-something behemoth. It was well before the serum, that he’s certain of.

James bites his lips. It’s testament to how rattled he is that the flash of heat the gesture evokes is concern and not arousal.

“You were smaller,” James says finally. “In my—in that dream. Skin and bones.”

“What?”

James touches his face, gentle like he’s afraid Steve will break.

“You had the same eyes.”

Steve swallows and fights not to look away.

“What happened?”

“We were in an apartment. Old and American. I don’t know how I know that, but—I don’t know. We were dancing there too. And then we fell.”

Steve jolts. James’s fist tightens in his hair like he’s holding Steve in place.

“Fell how?”

“I don’t know. Through the snow. I screamed. You didn’t, and I couldn’t see you. I woke up before I hit the bottom.”

It’s a while before Steve can speak.

“You turned to dust. In mine.”

James’s eyes are very wide and very blue, and Steve kisses him because he can’t stand to look at them for long. James gasps into it, shocked, but it turns into a relieved groan, and he opens his mouth to invite Steve in.

His mouth’s rank from sleep, and so is Steve’s, but he doesn’t care and James kisses back with a trembling frenzy that says he doesn’t either. He rolls on top of James, pinning him with his body. James goes tense, muscles turning to steel. Steve breaks the kiss and drags his wet lips along his jaw, soundless reassurance. The tension drains out of James and he melts under Steve, gasping something Steve can’t grasp.

James tugs Steve back to his mouth, and this kiss is harder, sharper, all teeth and wet tongue. The sour tang of blood floods his mouth, and Steve pulls back just to see James’s lips stained red.

James licks his lips, eyes dark with want.

“Fuck me,” he says.

Steve checks the time. It’s two in the morning. He got maybe three hours of sleep, and he doesn’t even know when James fell asleep. Steve’s still tired, and the haggard lines of James’s face haven’t smoothened out, but it’s an exhaustion that’s more emotional than physical. They’re sure not going to get any sleep tonight.

“We don’t have anything,” Steve says. “Our stuff’s in the Quinjet.”

They have the essentials – Steve’s shield, which is a bitch and a half to carry surreptitiously, and most of James’s weapons. They have some cash and cards. Everything else, from the mission files to James’s arm maintenance kit, is on the jet.

Including the lube.

Steve could go and try his luck at some pharmacy, but he’s loath to pry his skin off James’s. He shifts on top of him, aligning their hardening cocks. Steve’s only halfway there, and James also seems mostly soft, but experience has taught them both that it doesn’t take a lot for the other to get them raring to go.

“Good?” he asks, and James gives him a slow, heated smile.

“Yes.” His hand finds Steve, and it’s sweet, the tangling of their fingers, until James lifts their joined hands to his mouth and flicks his tongue over Steve’s knuckle. Heat swirls in Steve’s gut. “Could be better.”

“James.”

James flashes a devil’s grin and untangles their hands, catching Steve by the wrist. He rubs his face against Steve’s palm, eyes slitted and peering up at Steve with liquid want.

“I want to forget,” James says, his breath falling hot on Steve’s skin. “Make me.”

Steve watches him, breathing heavily, dick throbbing with blood. All James needs to twist Steve to his whims is a touch or a look, but here he is, spread out under Steve like a fallen god, asking for permission with a plea in his eyes.

“This is real,” Steve says. “I’m real.”

James’s smile trembles at the edges. He kisses Steve’s knuckles, licks at the fine hairs dusting the back of his fingers. Steve shivers, fissures of heat threading through his veins, bringing his blood to a slow, sweet simmer.

“I know,” James says, but there’s a look to him that makes Steve wonder whether he really does know.

Did it feel so real, the snow and the wind, that bony boy in an old apartment?

Steve squeezes his eyes shut. He still sees crinkled eyes and a carefree grin in the darkness under his lids, so he knows the answer, doesn’t he?

Cool metal traces his eyebrows, a tender, grounding touch.

“The world is never as real as when I’m with you, Steve.”

Steve kisses James’s eyes, his cheeks, his jaw, his mouth. He’s warm and soft under his lips, pulsing with life and solid as anything. When he draws back, James has a light flush on his cheeks and is looking at Steve like he’s the only thing he can see.

His lips are parted, wet and pink, and Steve prods at them with his fingers. James’s grip tightens around his wrist and opens up, sucking Steve in with a quiet moan. His mouth’s warm, his tongue a silky heat under the pads of Steve’s fingers. His pulse quickens, heart and cock throbbing, aching.

James sucks on his fingers until they’re wet and messy with spit, and then he pulls back, smiling with swollen lips.

“Steve,” he says.

It’s all he needs to say.

Steve rolls off James, working his boxers off his legs and hating even that instance of inconvenience. James strips off his pants off, and it doesn’t matter how many times he sees James naked or how often he gets to touch his skin, Steve will always be a little in awe of him. His body’s hard and battle-tested, brutal and beautiful.

“Stop that.”

When Steve drags his eyes to James’s face, his cheeks are a shade darker. He looks almost shy. He won’t tire of this either—how James is brash and confident about what he wants but melts like butter in the face of Steve’s helpless reverence.

“Can’t,” Steve says honestly. “You’re gorgeous.”

“You’re—god, Steve.”

James turns his head to the side, and Steve kisses gently along the slope of his shoulder. He bites at the juncture of neck and shoulder, sucks hard enough to leave a little pink bruise. He licks over the mark, grinning at how James arches his throat further in blatant invitation. Steve drags his lips up the lean curve of it, setting his teeth to the soft underside of his jaw.

James whimpers, and Steve bites harder at the sound. Hands scrabble at his shoulders, nails and metal scraping skin. It’s the pleasant kind of sting, and when Steve finds James’s mouth again, he sucks his lower lip into his mouth and bites until it bleeds.

Against his thigh, James’s cock leaks.

Steve pulls back, satisfied to see James panting and flushed down to his neck. He’s pretty, yeah, but a few hickeys and kiss-swollen lips turns his beauty debauched, and it wreaks unholy havoc on Steve.

He pushes his fingers into James’s mouth again, gut clenching when he starts sucking, wet and dirty and _desperate_.

“Steve,” James gasps when Steve takes his fingers back. “Please, now, I—”

“Patience, sweetheart.”

James scowls at him. It’s adorable.

“You like to tease too much. Stop it and fuck me.”

Steve’s in so much danger of falling in love with this man and never clawing his way out of it.

He bites back words he’s not ready to say just yet and sets about coaxing James open. His fingers are a tight fit with just spit to ease the way. James takes the first easy, legs falling open and muscles sucking Steve in. The second’s rougher, but the friction just gets James panting, eyes closed and mouth parted in an expression of bliss. Steve loses time just watching him, the frantic energy of earlier almost gone now. He’s in the mood for something slower, sweeter. He wants to watch James shake apart under him and hold him after.

James has other plans.

Steve laughs a little when James suddenly surges out of his prone position and turns over, rising onto all fours.

“What is it?” he asks, frowning as he stares at Steve over his shoulder.

Steve settles behind James and kisses the swell of his ass, dragging a day’s worth of stubble against the soft, sensitive skin. James squirms a little, nothing subtle about how he grinds his ass back against Steve. Of course he’d like a bit of beard burn. Steve’s half-tempted to grow one just to see James’s skin red and raw from it, but he’s not that gone on this yet.

“You want my mouth, James?”

James grunts and hangs his head, letting the arch of his body answer.

It’s not enough.

Steve brings a hand down hard on James’s cheek. Bright red creeps over the pale skin, mesmerizing. James shouts, whole body jolting.

“Answer me.”

“D-do that again.”

That brings Steve to a pause, if only for a second. He chuckles and rubs the spot he hit, blood burning hotter when James thrusts his ass needily into the ache.

“Ask me real nice, sweetheart. You know I like that.”

James shudders. It takes a few moments for him to speak. He doesn’t have a problem begging, Steve knows that all too well, but he’s equally sure that James just likes being the kind of mouthy brat who needs to be made to behave. Steve’s happy to provide. He’s nice like that.

“Please,” James mumbles eventually.

“Please _what_ , James?”

He hears James sigh, a sweet, shuddering sound.

“Hit me,” he says, tone something that can only be called dreamy. “Please, Steve?”

And well, how can Steve say no to that?

James has a pretty ass, curved all nice and soft to the touch. Steve palms it with both hands, sinking his fingers into the plush cheeks. He spreads them wide, just for a peek at James’s sweet little hole and can’t resist the urge to trace the rim with his tongue.

James curses, shuddering violently in Steve’s grip. He whines when Steve doesn’t follow up on it.

“What, you want me to spank you and rim you? I can only do one at a time, you know. Why don’t you pick?”

James makes a deep, grumbling sound that adequately expresses how unfair he finds that proposition, but when Steve just stays like that, hands keeping James’s cheeks spread to expose his hole, without doing anything, he gives in.

“Hit me,” he says, and when Steve digs his fingers in a little cruelly, he adds a choked, “Please!”

“I’ll fuck some manners into you after all.”

James grumbles again but doesn’t say anything. There’s tension in his body, and Steve knows it’s the good kind, feeling it in his own flesh. The mood now is a drastic change from that of a few minutes ago, and maybe it’s odd to be so cheerful as he flexes his hands and settles in to beat James's ass red and blue, but Steve likes that he can grin and taunt and have James give as good as he gets.

The first blow tears another shout out of James. Steve doesn’t give the sound enough time to die out before he brings his hand down on the other cheek. James bruises like a peach, the prettiest damn peach, and Steve works up to a steady rhythm. The room fills with James’s cries and the harsh slap of skin on skin, and Steve’s cock throbs painfully between his legs, his need writhing in his veins as James’s ass blooms bright under his hands.

And the best thing, the beautiful thing is that James gasps and grunts and whimpers and takes it all, shuddering and jolting under the blows without once flinching away.

 _I’m the only one in the goddamn world who can take you_ , James said all those months ago, in what feels like a whole other lifetime, and Steve never let himself think of how much it means to be able to touch a man he can’t break if he tried.

A particularly vicious blow to the inside of a cheek makes James’s elbows buckle. He crashes to the bed with a startled cry and rises as swiftly as he fell. Steve can see his right arm tremble.

“Too much?” he asks softly, running a soothing arm along the reddest patch of skin. It’s hot, burning with blood, and it makes Steve’s breath catch. “Want me to kiss it better, honey?”

And James—James shakes his head.

“Oh?” Steve asks.

“More,” James croaks. His voice is hoarse, shredded. “I can take it.”

“Hmm.” Steve pinches a bit of bruised skin between thumb and forefinger, and James’s breath breaks on a sob. “But do you want it?”

James laughs. At least he tries. The noise that escapes is soft and beautifully broken.

“Yeah, yeah, I want it.”

Steve’s cock’s heavy and wet between his legs, and it’s funny how he thought some minutes ago that he wanted something sweet and slow when the whole of him is now trembling with the need to sink sharp claws into James’s softest parts and lay it all to waste, only to put him back together again, piece by piece. And yeah, he still wants to fuck him all good and nice, but he wants this violence too. His desire for James is a study in duality, but there’s nothing irreconcilable about it. Steve wants him any way, he wants him every way.

He spanks James until his whole body’s shaking and he’s sobbing Steve’s name in between ragged breaths.

“Ssh,” Steve croons, gently stroking over the burning skin of his ass, knowing that’s also hurting James. “Sweetheart, hush, I got you, it’s over.”

James whines and collapses, arms finally giving away. Steve kisses the crease where his ass meets thigh, first one side and then the other, and he kisses his way up, mouthing at James’s heated skin. He spreads James wide again and buries his face between his cheeks, hunger twisting through him at James’s shocked cry.

James is blood-hot and bitter under his tongue, and he opens for Steve as easy as anything. He grinds weakly back into Steve’s face, but there’s none of the usual frantic energy he has when Steve puts his mouth on his hole. It’s nice to have James trembling and whimpering, too far gone to do much. He’s soft and vulnerable like this, and Steve feels protective of him, tenderness splitting his ribs wide to take a bite out of his heart.

He loses himself to the taste and heat of James, mind far from thoughts of dancing in the snow.

When he pulls back, his jaw’s aching, his lips are numb, and James is keening quietly into the pillow. Steve spits into his palm and hisses when he spreads it over his aching cock. It’s flushed an angry red, the head slick with precome. He slides it along James’s, sheer _want_ pulsing through his veins at the sight of his length sliding in between the bruised cheeks.

“James,” he calls, running a palm up James’s spine. “Can I?”

Assent comes in the form of a weak grunt and James tilting his ass back into Steve’s dick.

Steve guides himself to James’s hole and tries not to lose his fucking mind at the sight of that pretty pink thing swallowing his cock hungrily. The rim’s stretched tight around his girth, and when Steve runs a finger gently along the taut skin, James lets out a fragile cry and clamps tight around him. Steve’s not even halfway in, just the head and a little more, and it takes every ounce of control he has not to just slam in deep.

“Easy,” he grits out, stroking along James’s flank like he’s soothing a spooked animal. It works, and isn’t that the sweetest thing? “Let me in, sweetheart.”

James sobs.

“Ssh, breathe. That’s it. There you go. That’s my guy. Always feel so fucking good, James.”

James breathes hard and shakes apart, stretched wide and stuffed full.

Steve shifts, stretching his body so his front is plastered to James’s back, weight kept carefully off him. Their bodies are hot and slick with sweat, and there’s something gut-wrenchingly filthy about the wet slide of their skin as Steve starts to fuck James, slow to start with, working his cock in short, grinding thrusts that keep him half-buried in James every moment.

James groans into the pillow. Steve licks at the sweat gathered on his back. He bites down too, and it’s harder to find purchase on the tensed plane of James’s back but his teeth still catch on flesh, tearing a harsh cry out of him. Steve mouths gently at the teeth marks and presses himself deep into James, wanting, needing to crawl into him.

“St–Steve, _Steve_.”

James sounds drunk, lost and gone. Steve is addicted to this side of him.

He fucks him harder, straightening up for more leverage. James’s hips bloom with bruises when Steve grips it tight, and he doesn’t so much as whimper at that but he screams when Steve slams into him hard enough to rattle their bones.

He stops, grabs a fistful of James’s hair, and yanks. James screams but scrambles up all the same, getting his arms back under him. Steve gives his hair one last tug and lets go, but James stays as he is, whole body heaving with deep, ragged breaths.

“You wanted to forget,” Steve pants, his voice rough and wrecked. “I’ll make you forget.”

James garbles a cry that might be Steve’s name, might be fucking Russian. It doesn’t matter, not when his body speaks loud enough, tight and shuddering in turns. The heat of him is maddening, sinking iron hooks into Steve’s gut and pulling him deeper and deeper into James.

James is a vision, back bowed and hair split around his pale nape, and Steve wants to eat him alive.

“Touch yourself,” he says, and James jolts like Steve hit him instead. His ass is in shades of violent red, the bruises darkening. It must hurt, each graceless collision of their bodies as Steve rams into him with mounting urgency, and there’s something dark unfurling in Steve’s chest at the thought.

James reaches for himself with a trembling hand. Steve can feel the moment he touches his cock. His ass clenches hard all around him, the heat and pressure almost painful. Steve slams in hard and stays there, as deep in James as he can get. He wants to stay there forever, buried in James’s wet heat. But James is shaking to pieces against him, staccato cries building to a shuddering frenzy as he strokes himself faster and faster, hand moving at a blur as his noises echo with mingled pain and pleasure.

Steve pulls out until the head’s just barely in and thrust back inside with a brutal, claiming thrust that has James’s shout breaking into a shrill scream. Steve wants to eat the sound, tear a piece of it for himself with lips and teeth, but he can’t so he settles for wrapping a hand around James’s throat and using the harsh grip to haul him upright.

It’s rushed and awkward, and Steve slips out of him, but then James’s back is flush against his torso and his whimpers are vibrating under Steve’s palm.

Steve grips James’s jaw and yanks him to a kiss. James kisses back, clumsy as he heaves for breath, and even that turns into slack lips and hushed whimpers when Steve fucks back into him. The taste of him is what Steve needs, and it won’t take long between that and the heat of his body to send him over, but he wants to feel James come first, wants him screaming around Steve.

He wraps his hand around James, and James says something, but the words are lost between their lips and James just moans, mouth open like it’s begging for Steve to lick into him. And he does, tongue sliding in for a taste, and it’s wet and a mess, all of it, James’s cock in his hand, his ass around his cock, his mouth against his, and Steve doesn’t know which way’s up, doesn’t know anything but James.

James freezes suddenly, only for a second before his cock jerks in Steve’s hand, coming all over his hand while James shudders, hard and helpless. Steve grinds his cock lazily into him, easing up as he works James through it, murmuring sweet nonsense against his panting lips. And then James’s cock is soft in his fist and his body’s all loose, and Steve just has to hold him tight and fuck him deep and swallow James’s soft whines as he chases his pleasure.

He finds it deep inside James, spilling hot into him as he squirms in Steve’s arms. He rolls his hips through it, chasing heat and friction, and James cries so sweetly for him, staining their kiss with the taste of tears.

“Hey, hey, hush,” Steve says, hot all over and reeling from it. James feels so good in his arms, warm and solid and right. “You’re alright.”

“ _Steve_.”

“Ssh.”

He pulls out, softening cock slipping out of James. Come trickles out in its wake, and Steve can’t help sliding a hand between James’s legs to feel it wet his thighs. James moans and makes a half-hearted attempt to squirm away, but Steve holds him tighter and he doesn’t go anywhere, slumping back against Steve with a quiet whine.

Steve smears his come into James’s skin, something old and primal howling at the back of his mind.

It sounds like the wind.

He buries his face in James’s throat and breathes him in. He’s warm and he’s real and he’s Steve’s, and Steve is his too, he knows that now. People like them can’t belong to much more than the blood in their hands and the collars wrapped around their throats, but god, they do try.

“Don’t go away,” Steve tells the heated, sweat-slick skin of James’s throat, and he’s not even sure whether he meant to be heard, but James answer all the same.

“Where would I go?” he asks, voice hoarse, gutted.

 _Away_ , is the honest answer. This man isn’t meant for Steve. He never was. But Steve clutches him tighter and allows himself a lie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love hearing your thoughts 😉


	4. conversations with simulations (am i in a dream or the in-between)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We will dance now, Steve. It was only a dream.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is something of a midway point—that’s why the chapter is a bit shorter than usual. 3 more chapters and we should be done with this part.
> 
> Also, Wanda in this verse was with Hydra for longer than canon!Wanda and also freed herself and Pietro after the dusting. She is a wee bit different.

The next hotel they check into has their things—the stuff from the Quinjet, including a coded copy of the mission files—waiting for them in the room, but there’s neither hide nor hair of Romanova herself.

James swears again, hard and vehement, and Steve’s Russian may be close to nonexistent, but he doesn’t need to understand the words to get a gist of their meaning. He waits, patient and amused, for James to finish his tirade and take a breath.

“Language,” Steve says.

James whirls on him, eyes blazing, and whatever he sees on Steve’s face makes him growl.

“You,” James snarls, “bloody hypocrite.”

There’s a hulking man with a metal arm glaring at Steve with his teeth bared. It should be a terrifying sight; Steve is utterly enamored.

James yelps into the kiss, hands scrabbling on Steve’s shoulders, shocked for an instant before their grip turns sure and intent, sinking into Steve’s skin through his jacket and t-shirt. Steve kisses him sweetly, nipping at James’s lips and mouthing at his jaw, grinning when bristly stubble makes his lips ache.

“This is unfair,” James says when Steve pulls back. “I cannot think with your mouth on me.”

Steve preens. He tries to be subtle but judging by James’s unimpressed frown, he fails.

“That’s a severe liability,” Steve tells him seriously. “Can’t have that. We should practice so you can think through it.”

For a second, it seems like James actually believes him, which makes Steve wonder seriously about the kind of training the Russians favor. Despite the wonders Thanos did for international relations, American intelligence agencies have their fair share of hair-raising rumors about the Red Room, and S.H.I.E.L.D agents are hardly immune to petty gossip.

But then James’s expression clears into one of familiar exasperation.

“Ah yes,” he drawls. “Would be very bad if they made you kiss me in the middle of a fight. I would lose terribly.”

Steve nuzzles close, dragging his nose up the side of James’s face, lingering over a cheekbone that’s sharp enough to cut. He kisses it, flicking his tongue along the skin, and James laughs, squirming lightly in Steve’s arms.

“Can’t have that,” Steve repeats, mouthing his way back to James’s lips. “Come here.”

James sighs into it, half-pleased and half-resigned, and Steve kisses him with all he’s got, trying and failing to ignore the seed of desperation that sprouted inside him after that thrice-damned vision. He doesn’t understand the forest and the snow, but the message is clear enough; he’s going to lose James. He doesn’t know how the Scarlet Witch’s power works—maybe she’s prophetic, maybe she’s just very skilled at mindfuck, maybe it’s both. Steve can’t deny that what she did was effective. He’s not going to let it ruin the mission, but he’s not going to let James go a second before he has to, before James decides to leave.

It's terrifying, that level of attachment in such a short time, to a man he barely knows, but it is what he is. Steve’s never loved easy, and his ma has always said he’s as stubborn as a—

Steve freezes.

He doesn’t know where that thought came from. It doesn’t make any sense. His mother never called him a stubborn mule because he never knew her, but it sure sounds like something Sister Mary Sarah would have said—

“Steve?” James murmurs against Steve’s lips. “Is everything alright?”

The automatic reassurance gets stuck in Steve’s throat. He swallows, but it’s still there, white lies withering on his tongue.

“I keep thinking weird shit,” he confesses in the end, closing his eyes so he doesn’t have to look James in the eye. “My head’s going places that make no sense. Ever since—”

He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t need to. James was there. James endured the same. There’s empathy in the soft, acknowledging sound he makes and solidarity in the warm kisses he peppers over Steve’s face. James pecks him on the lips, and Steve’s mouth curls up at the corners despite everything.

“Sorry,” he says. “Shitty timing, I know.”

“Please,” James says, humor lacing his voice but not quite hiding the seriousness underneath. “Are we going to pretend we have both not been thinking of that every time we had sex the last week?”

“Wha—James!” Steve sputters, trying to pull away and look at James but stopped by the metal hand holding the back of his head.

“Am I wrong?” James asks against Steve’s mouth.

Steve huffs.

“Well. No.”

James’s smile is more of a smirk, Steve knows by the curve of it against his mouth. He also knows when it fades. James drops his head, tucking his face into the hollow of Steve’s throat, and Steve slides his fingers through his hair, rubbing soothing circles into his scalp.

“I do not like it,” James says after a while. “What she did, it is too effective. It should not be.”

It’s a very diplomatic way of saying that neither of them should be so attached to each other, that the visions should not be as devastating as they’ve turned out to be. It more or less echoes what Steve just thought of, what he’s been dwelling helplessly on for days on end.

“It shouldn’t, yeah,” Steve agrees. And then, because he really never does anything easy, he adds, “But I’m not very surprised either.”

It’s not a confession per se, but it’s hardly subtle. Steve’s not pledging undying love yet. But he knows himself well enough to say that the ‘yet’ has a high chance of being struck out soon.

In his arms, James is tense.

“Aren’t you?” he asks.

It’s a chance to back out, probably, albeit one Steve has no intention of taking.

“No, I’m not.”

James straightens and steps back. Steve lets him.

Cool blue eyes regard Steve, carefully devoid of emotion. In Steve’s apartment, there’s nearly two dozen sketches of those eyes. He tore up a few, frustration peaking when he realized he could never get the color right, but there were more he couldn’t bear to destroy.

When James smiles, it’s sad at the edges.

“I will tell you a secret, Steve,” he says softly. “Neither am I.”

-

Romanova contacts them a few hours later, a video call. That’s new. Until now, all they’ve had are texts and the occasional voice call that James swore into.

James greets her with rapid-fire Russian, which Romanova endures with no expression save for a single, arched eyebrow.

“Are you done?” she asks when he falls silent. “Or would you like to waste more time?”

James glowers. Steve is pretty sure he’s also seeing the beginning of a pout. He doesn’t really understand these two’s relationship. They mostly seem to communicate through caustic banter. But even he can see the worry underlying James’s vehemence, and while he can’t read Romanova as well, he thinks she’s more amused than irritated by all the cursing.

“Where are you?” Steve asks, casually interrupting the staring match the two have devolved into. “Are you safe?”

Romanova turns that eyebrow on him. Steve meets her blank stare readily. It feels like a test, and he doesn’t know whether he passes it, but he gets a good feeling about it when he sees her mouth quirk up at one side.

“Quite safe, Captain,” she says. “The Twins are hard to track, and we cannot afford to regroup now. I will send you coordinates and the Quinjet, when it is time.”

It’s Steve’s turns to raise an eyebrow.

“This isn’t a solo mission, Agent. We’re your team.”

She inclines her head.

“I know. But you are both compromised.”

Beside him, James stiffens.

“Nat—”

She holds up one hand and cuts him off.

“Wanda Maximoff’s powers do not affect me as much. I did try to wake you before pursuing her, but it was no use. Take time _now_ because we can’t afford to lose you two when we strike.”

Steve purses his lips. He wants to protest out of sheer principle, but the brutal truth is that Romanova is right. He barely caught a glimpse of Maximoff before she brought him down with a swirl of red. It was no different with James, he knows. The only reason they still have a lead is because of Romanova.

“Besides,” Romanova says when the silence stretches on, “it is easier for me to blend into the crowd than the two of you.”

“Hey!” James protests.

She is merciless.

“You are an assassin, James, not a spy. And you, Captain—”

“Oh, I know,” Steve says before she can continue. “James already told me how Captains America make terrible spies.”

Romanova turns sharp green eyes on James, and Steve follows her lead. James turns an interesting shade of pink under their combined regard. He grumbles something incoherent, ducking his head and letting his hair hide his face. It’s unbearably adorable. Steve wants to cup him between his palms and swallow him whole.

He doesn’t know if that shows on his face; it must because when he turns back to the screen, Romanova is staring at him, face wiped clean of all emotion. She narrows her eyes at him, but Steve refuses to quail. James deserves better than for Steve to falter and hide.

Steve has done great and terrible things in the name of peace and justice, but caring for James isn’t one of them. It’s good and true, and it’s _Steve’s_.

Romanova is the first to look away.

She cuts the call soon after that.

“Bossy fuck,” James says, sauntering over to the bed to collapse face-first on it.

“You seem to enjoy that sort of personality.”

James’s answer is a muffled and incoherent, but the metal finger flipping Steve the bird sends the message across very well.

-

Steve realizes four days in that he does not cope well with forced inactivity in the middle of a mission and that no amount of bed-breaking sex with James can calm the restlessness writhing under his skin.

James is very good company, and not just in bed, and if this were a vacation or even Steve’s off-time, he would love nothing more than to spend day after day with James, talking about nothing and everything, kissing whenever the mood took them, and fucking on every available flat surface. But it’s not; Steve’s brain is set to mission mode, and the knowledge that Romanova is out there doing the job he and James should both be doing makes Steve irritable and snappish. It makes it worse that she’s more or less justified in her reasoning. Steve wouldn’t allow it otherwise, no matter how competent she seemed. That doesn’t mean he’s happy about it.

James endures Steve transforming overnight into a grouchy shitstain with admirable equanimity.

“I would ask for a spar,” James says lightly, watching from his perch by the window while Steve stalks across the room. “Help you work out that tension. But this room cannot handle it.”

Steve shoots him a smile, amused in spite of himself.

“You mean, you want me to beat you up with my fist before I beat you up with my dick?”

The expression on James’s face is priceless. And the way the shock dissolves into delight is nothing short of beautiful. It roots Steve to the spot for a few seconds, heart suddenly in his throat.

By the time he recovers himself, at least a little, James is speaking, voice pitched low and with the devil’s glint in his eyes.

“Come now, Captain. We are professionals.”

Steve looks pointedly at a healing bruise on James’s throat, distinctly finger-shaped. It will fade entirely in another hour or so, but for now, it’s a pleasant reminder of how thoroughly Steve can lose himself in James.

The thought alone is enough to flood his body with a telltale heat, even though it’s been hardly three hours since he fucked James through the mattress. The frustration coiled like a snake in Steve’s gut twists into another kind of tension.

James sees it, knows it, and he rises to his feet in one fluid movement, a corner of his mouth curling into an inviting smirk.

“I can still help you work out the tension,” he says.

“Aren’t you sore?” Steve asks.

“Hmm. No. Perhaps you should put your back into it more.”

Steve doesn’t know whether to laugh or put this man over his knee. He meets James in the middle of the room, and he’s already barely dressed, his long t-shirt barely covering his groin. Steve pulls it over his head and sets his teeth to the bruise he noticed earlier, grinning around a mouthful of flesh when James fists a hand in his hair and makes that soft, throaty sound that can’t be heard so much as felt.

He sucks a wet, messy path up the long arch of James’s throat, bruising the skin anew, and when he finds James’s lips, they’re parted and panting, a warm welcome for Steve’s tongue. There’s something heady about the heat and taste of James’s mouth. Steve never wants to get used to it, wants this shock to his system each and every time.

He pulls back, and James tries to chase him, moaning when Steve holds him at bay with a hand on his throat. He opens sweetly for the fingers Steve slides into his mouth, dark eyes half-closed as he sucks wetly on them.

He’s still a little lose from when Steve fucked him, his muscles soft and warm, and James just gives a quiet gasp when Steve slides two fingers in knuckle-deep. He fingers James lazily, watching him bite his lips and sucks in harsh breaths. The heat in Steve’s veins climbs to a slow, sweet simmer, anything but urgent. The unsavory thoughts plaguing him get shoved to the background, and Steve likes this, the ease and the simplicity of drowning in James.

“You’re trouble,” he says, voicing a thought he’s had for a long, long time.

James slits an eye open, mouth curling into a trembling smirk.

“Think you like me that way,” he husks, voice dark like smoke.

Steve sends him to his knees and joins him on the floor, and he fucks him there too, good and rough and deep, James’s hands clawing at the floor, in his own hair, down Steve’s back, pain and pleasure spiraling into a mind-numbing torrent of sensation. Steve puts his back into it, makes James scream and makes him cry, and he fucks him through the tight clench of his body and to the other side, driving in deep and then deeper until Steve surrenders with a moan buried in James’s throat.

Sex doesn’t always guarantee peace of mind, but for a little while, Steve’s head is quiet and empty, and James is limp and sweet in his arms, it’s not so bad, this life.

-

Four days becomes seven becomes ten. Romanova’s updates are succinct and informative and not nearly enough to assuage Steve’s frustration. They’ve shifted motels twice in that time, renting cars and putting a fair amount of space between locations, but none of it does more than craft a thin illusion of productivity.

James no longer seems as calm about the waiting as he used to be. That’s strangely reassuring to see.

Steve knows the visions are still eating at him too. They don’t really talk about it—haven’t, since that first time, tangled together after a nightmare, the two of them equally afraid. It’s not even that Steve’s opposed to talking about it. He just doesn’t know where to start, knows even less where it will end.

It’s Tuesday evening, barely an hour after Romanova’s last update, that James sits upright on the bed with an unsettlingly determined expression and marches over to where his phone’s charging on the table.

Steve watches bemusedly as James finger-punches the screen with a surprising amount of vehemence.

Music starts to play.

“Come.”

Steve just blinks.

“What?”

James slants him an impatient glance, expression not softening at all when Steve just stares back, wide-eyed and a little concerned. The concern just climbs higher when James stalks towards him, phone clutched in his hand, the music getting louder with proximity.

He half expects James to haul him up by the collar like his body language seems to suggest, but James just stops a good two feet away from the bed and holds out a hand.

“Uh, James?”

“We’re dancing.”

A shiver runs down Steve’s spine at the word. Concern shifts to caution.

“James,” he says, quieter, “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” James asks, teeth bared in challenge. He’s angry, but it doesn’t seem to be at Steve. “We danced in those dreams, yes? You think about it. I know. I do too. We will dance now, Steve. It was only a dream.”

Steve rises to his feet in a daze, reaching for James. They’re standing so close now, fingers tangled together.

“They were a little more than that, sweetheart,” Steve says softly.

Those dreams, the Witch’s visions, they wouldn’t terrify Steve so much if James weren’t in them. He knows that. He doesn’t know what she did to his mind, and he’s more than a little afraid of knowing the answer.

James closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them, they’re blazing and determined.

“So they were,” he says. “It was still not real. We say that, yet here we are, Steve, lashing out at shadows. We can’t keep doing this.”

“Is this supposed to help?” Steve asks, harsher than he really means to.

James’s lips thin.

“I would like to dance with you outside of a nightmare.”

And _oh_ , there’s nothing Steve can do or say against that, no resistance he has the will for. James makes him weak in the most curious way, and he’s more dangerous than any weapon Steve has had to face.

“Alright,” Steve says, pressing a gentle, apologetic kiss to the corner of James’s mouth. “We’ll dance.”

He lets James guide him to center of what little free space is there in the room before adding, “I don’t know how to dance though.”

James barely blinks.

“It is not a tango, Steve, just move your feet.”

Easy for him to say. Steve tries to follow James’s lead but keeps looking down at their feet instead of gazing meaningfully into his eyes, and it’s nothing at all like the hall and the mountain and the blue-eyed boy with James’s face.

It helps.

“You _are_ terrible,” James says like a revelation, eyes wide and delighted. “How are you this terrible?”

“Shaddap,” Steve says, blushing and acutely aware of it. He tries to hide his face in James’s throat but James doesn’t let him, pulling back to laugh some more at Steve’s pain.

Steve reels him back in, and James crashes into him with a soft gasp, breaking into a beaming smile. He winds his arms around Steve’s neck, pressing so close that they can’t dance at all, can only shuffle along in a tangle of limbs. It’s warm, James is warm, and Steve wants to sink into him, forget Maximoff and Romanova and S.H.I.E.L.D and the Red Room, forget everything but James in his arms.

“I could love you,” Steve blurts out, not wholly meaning to, but after a moment of instinctive shock, he realizes that he doesn’t really want to hold this back.

James is surprised, then sad, mouth curving up into a wistful smile.

“Does it scare you?” he asks.

“I’m terrified,” Steve says honestly. “But that’s never stopped me.”

James cups Steve’s face, and having seen the violence this man can wreck with those hands, it never ceases to be a surprise, how gentle his touch can be, how delicate he makes Steve feel, not in body but in the heart.

“I am too,” James says. “And I might let it stop me if it were anyone else, Steve, but not with you.”

“James…”

He kisses Steve, brief and chaste, and murmurs a warning against his mouth.

“I cannot promise you a happy ending, Steve.”

“I don’t believe in happy endings,” Steve says. He knows he used to, but he doesn’t know when he stopped. “I’d still like to try with you.”

“I’ve only ever had one answer for you. All that I am, it’s yours. But you should know it’s not much.”

Steve pulls back, and it’s his turn to takes James’s face between his hands and hold him like he’s precious.

“It _is_. Don’t you even—you’re everything I didn’t know to want. Don’t you dare tell me that’s not enough.”

James’s eyes are bright and when he blinks, his lashes come away wet and clumped. Steve’s not much different, swallowing past that telltale burn in his throat. He kisses James, his mouth, his cheeks, his nose, his eyes, every part in reach, every inch of skin, trying to memorize the soft warmth of him. James trembles under the kisses, sighing softly, swaying forward against Steve.

It's not like the dream, and James isn’t Steve’s blue-eyed boy. His heart still pounds at those memories, but now, it’s racing just for James.

-

It’s a little better after the dance, and while Steve can’t say he’s entirely unaffected by the vision now, his restlessness is mostly about the mission than ghostly visions of James.

Romanova is trying her best, and it’s exceedingly clear that she is a terrifyingly efficient agent, but the twins are canny and surprisingly resourceful. Steve assumes they made good use of the three years between their escape and their destructive resurgence. Sitwell isn’t particularly happy with the situation, but he’s not pushing the way he usually does either. Steve gets the sense that this mission is slotted to have a low-rate success anyway. He doesn’t know how the Red Room superiors are reacting to their lack of progress, but neither James nor Romanova seems particularly bothered, so he figures it’s alright.

Sometimes, he thinks this whole mission is a test. No, he’s fairly certain. He just doesn’t know who’s being tested—Steve, the agents, or their respective agencies. But well, they’re a good team. And if they do manage to capture or eliminate the twins, all the better. They have had better success than the rest, if only by surviving Wanda Maximoff’s mind-meddling without going insane.

The girl terrifies Steve.

That’s the thought with which he walks into the café, his somber mood not at all a match for its bright colors and cheery barista. He manages to summon a smile for the guy while he places his orders and beats a fast retreat to a table at the back, one with a good sightline. He realizes a moment too late that he forgot to place an order for James, but the thought of returning to the counter is unpleasant. He’ll get James breakfast from somewhere else; knowing the guy, he’ll be sound asleep by the time Steve returns and will harp about being left in a cold bed before pulling Steve down for human-blanket purposes.

It’s strange, not in a bad way, how he can see so clearly what a life with James will be like. _No happy ending_ crosses his mind, brief and not as threatening as it should be because it is only a potential now, not a sure reality. Steve defied certain death with the serum—reality feels oddly malleable whenever he thinks about it.

He never takes his eyes off the door, never stops keeping an eye on the whole of the small café.

He never sees her coming.

Red jacket and brown hair, a pale face half-hidden under a clunky pair of sunglasses—Wanda Maximoff doesn’t look dangerous when she sits on the chair opposite him, but when she tugs the glasses down, her dark eyes are tinged red.

Steve reaches for the knife he keeps strapped to his leg, wishing desperately for his shield, for at least a gun, but she speaks just as his fingers brush the handle.

“Don’t,” she says, “or I’ll tear into the minds of every soul in this place.”

Steve freezes.

Slowly, he slides his hand back up his leg, fingers brushing his belt, pressing a button.

She smiles. It’s not an unkind expression. Steve was expecting something more comfortably diabolical. But now, getting a good look up close instead of the momentary but striking glimpse last time, Steve feels cold all over—she’s a _kid_. The file didn’t mention her birthday, only that she was young when she joined the program that made her into what she is. It lasted a few years. Steve didn’t think much of it. But now, he looks at the smooth lines of her face and remembers that she likely lost five years in the Decimation. She can’t be more than twenty-five.

There’s a throb in his heart that he calls sympathy because there’s something inherently absurd in pitying someone entirely capable of ripping his mind to shreds.

“It worked,” she says, and despite everything, Steve stiffens at her voice, body at the ready. “I knew it would, on you. It’s impressive. You are chained by your morality even now. Him, not so much.”

“Who?” Steve asked warily.

“Your partner,” she replies, smiling placidly. “The Winter Soldier has fewer scruples, Captain.”

“Shut up.” It’s a harsh bark, a burst of anger. “You don’t know anything about him.”

Her smile doesn’t turn sad so much as she stops the sadness from not showing. Steve recalls, with no small amount of discomfort, that this is what he recalls from his first encounter with Maximoff—that she looked sad, her whole face a study in sorrow.

“Do you?” she asks.

“I know enough. Why are you here? What do you want?”

“I want many things,” she says, voice taking on a dreamy quality as her eyes close halfway. Steve doesn’t think for a moment that she’s as unguarded as her expression makes it see. “And I cannot have most of them.”

“I don’t have time for games, Maximoff.”

“Wanda is fine, Captain. And I know. You’re running out of time.”

Steve doesn’t have an explanation for why those words make unease slither down his spine. His heartbeat picks up, and Maximoff’s eyes narrow like she can hear it. She continues speaking, eerily serene.

“They’re waiting, you see. They want you to fail, yet they don’t. We’re strange creatures, us humans. Though are we human anymore, Captain? You, me, your partner, my brother. We’re all something else, for better or for worse.”

Steve takes a moment to mentally gape at the fact that his target is sharing a table with him, philosophizing on metahuman existence. He shakes it off quickly.

“Maximoff, I don’t know about you and I have my doubts, but I’m exactly as human as I need to be. I’ll ask one more time. What do you _want_?”

Her smile, this time, is crooked, almost pained.

“I want you to remember.”

There’s a pregnant pause.

“What,” Steve says flatly.

She gives him a slow blink.

“I apologize for what I showed you that day,” she says, unruffled when Steve glares at the mention of it. “It was necessary.”

“Maximoff, you’re fucking crazy.”

For some unholy reason, she fucking laughs.

“Oh, I am aware, Captain. It worries them. But I am doing well enough, thank you.”

“I—Jesus Christ, kid.”

She’s almost grinning, and this is strange, this whole thing, and Steve’s tempted to jump over the table and knock her out just to put an end to his climbing confusion, but her eyes are still faintly red and the tinge of madness to her smile isn’t nearly as benign as it seems. And the café-goers are going about their day, innocent and unaware, and she was right—Steve is chained by his morality.

“I did not conjure those visions, Captain. Your own mind did. Whatever you saw, they’re your memories tailored into a nightmare. And that is why I apologize. It was unkind, necessary as it was.”

“That’s impossible,” Steve says, unsure whether he should be indulging her and half-afraid of the quiet conviction she has in all she says. “There was nothing necessary about what you did either.”

“Hmm, not quite. Horror is the best trigger I’ve found so far. Your worst memories will pull you into yourself better than anything else. I could have given you a world where you’re with him, safe and loved forever, and you would have slumbered until you died. If you can even die.”

There’s a picture she’s painting, and Steve doesn’t like the shades he sees.

“You’re saying you wanted us to wake up,” Steve says. “Why?”

“No, Captain. I wanted you to remember.”

The table creaks alarmingly under Steve’s grip. He eases off, but she’s staring at the cracks with one eyebrow arched, mouth quirked into an unreadable expression.

“I don’t know what you intended to do,” Steve tells her, trying not to grit his teeth, “but what I saw were not my memories.”

“How do you know?”

“I know who I am, Maximoff.”

“Do you?”

There’s a cutting simplicity to the way she asks that question. Steve finds himself strangely terrified.

“Did you ask him whether he was one of the dusted?”

Steve tries not to react. He succeeds, mostly.

“Ah,” she says. “You haven’t. You should.”

Steve tries to tamp down yet another surge of fury. You didn’t ask _anyone_ whether they were dusted. It’s one of the few unspoken rules that are followed by most across the world. Steve’s oddly insulted that she thinks he’ll hurt James that way.

It’s not like he didn’t want to, the first few days after the visions, when he and James barely let go of each other for fear of the other vanishing horribly. But he didn’t then, and he won’t now.

Maximoff sighs.

“I won’t ask for your trust, Captain. I am not that great a fool. But I only want to help.”

“You know what I think, kid?”

She tilts her head expectantly.

“That this whole thing’s bullshit. Why? You don’t need to play mind games, you’re too fucking powerful. Is this _fun_ for you?”

“Not at all,” she answers calmly. “I told you why, Captain. I’ve been telling you this whole time. Ask him. Remember.”

She reaches for him, arm darting snake-swift across the table, fingers sparking with red. Steve leaps away, knocking his chair over, the sound almost drowning out that of glass shattering.

The bullet stops an inch from Maximoff’s temple, encased in an ominous red.

Screaming follows.

“Fuck,” Steve mutters, casting a frantic eye along the panicked café-goers. “ _James_.”

“Soldier,” Maximoff sighs, the bullet dropping to the table.

Around them, the café is a mess. Steve tackles Maximoff because the time she spends trying to take him down is time the civilians can use to escape. He slams into an invisible wall and by the time it gives, Maximoff is a good ten feet away, a splotch of motionless red. The café is now almost empty.

Something round and familiar rolls in through the open window.

Steve leaps away, but the smoke is already filling the room, its color a sickly green. Maximoff shines brightly, her red casting strange shadows in the smoke.

She mouths something at him.

_Remember who you are._

Steve can’t breathe.

Chemical agents don’t affect him, but there are black spots in his visions and his toes are numb and Steve can’t _breathe_ —

He blacks out.

-

“Woah there, buddy— _mmph_.”

“I miss you. Miss this.”

“Uh-huh. I’m right here. And you’re kissing me ten feet and a convenient tree away from the boys. Ain’t like we’ve been deprived.”

“Buck, you know that’s not what I meant.”

“Oh, Steve, c’mon, no more of this—”

“We have to talk. We _will_ talk.”

“Not tonight, sweetheart. Big mission tomorrow.”

“After. We’ll get Zola, then we’ll get a room, and you’re gonna tell what’s been eatin’ at you since that camp.”

“Stevie—””

“It’s killing you, and it’s killing me to see it.”

“Stubborn son of a bitch. _Fine_. Fine.”

.

.

.

“Remember when I made you ride the Cyclone at Coney Island?”

“Yeah, and I threw up?”

“This isn’t payback, is it?”

“Now why would I do that?”

.

.

.

“ _BUCKY_!”

.

.

.

“All I had to do was hold him.”

.

.

.

“Peggy, this is my choice.”

“Steve? Ste–”

.

.

.

“Dobroye utro, Captain Rogers.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think <3


	5. you fall in and fall away (this love is in retrograde)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve’s never been in love before. It’s a wonder, how natural it feels, how inevitable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more p l o t
> 
> I got a tumblr [here](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/), feel free to drop by!

“Steve, Steve, wake up, you have to wake up, it’s not real, none of it’s _real_ , Steve—”

He jerks upright, and it’s only Bucky’s quick reflexes that save them both from a head-on collision.

Bucky—

Who the hell is Bucky?

_A rose by any other name—_

“Steve,” James calls, voice soft, eyes wary.

James. Not Bucky. Steve’s never met anyone named Bucky.

But his memory—

“Steve,” James snaps, almost angry. “Look at me.”

Steve looks at him. Everything about James is achingly familiar—his dark hair, his blue-grey eyes, the cleft in his chin, the way he’s kind but has learned to be cold. It’s all been familiar from the moment Steve met him.

Hands cup his cheeks, one warm flesh, the other cold metal. The dichotomy is a shock to Steve’s system. He blinks and finds that James’s expression has morphed into one of terror.

“Don’t go away again,” he says, voice trembling. “Stay with me. It wasn’t real. Whatever you saw, it wasn’t real.”

What he saw—

“Wanda,” Steve says, thinking of the girl and the restaurant. Sad eyes tinged red.

_Remember who you are._

“She told me—”

“It doesn’t matter,” James all but growls. “Whatever the bitch said, fuck it. I almost—you were out for _hours_ , Steve.”

That’s right, there was—

“Smoke,” Steve says. “Shouldn’t have affected me.”

“It was tailored to your physiology. It had to be. Knocked you the hell out. I had to hold my breath getting you out and even then, I was dizzy by the end. They know, Steve. They know what we are. How we are.”

Steve’s listening to every word, but none of it sinks it. He’s mesmerized by James’s face. It’s animated, almost violent with emotion. He’s beautiful. He’s the most beautiful thing Steve has ever seen. He always was.

“—through to Natasha, been trying to—mmph!”

James’s mouth is slack with shock, and Steve takes advantage, licks inside. He tastes like protein bars and under it, like James, like warm flesh. Steve fists one hair in a half-undone braid and curls the other around the side of James’s neck, holding him close, keeping him in place.

It's nice when James starts to kiss back, the hands on Steve’s face spreading their fingers wide, cradling him gently.

Steve kisses him until his chest aches, until his head’s throbbing with images that make no sense. Cities he’s never been to. Men he’s never met. And always, always, James, hair long and short and shaved and ragged, expression blank and bursting with life, eyes always the same.

Steve breaks the kiss panting but presses his lips frantically to James’s jaw, his cheek, the top of his wide, shocked eyes. There’s grey at the edges of his vision. The rest of it spins with haunting blue-grey.

“I think I was meant to find you,” Steve says.

He passes out.

-

He wakes feeling like death warmed over.

That’s sadly not an unusual occurrence in his line of work. Steve knows he chose this life and has kept choosing it for over a decade, but he still thinks he’s justified in cussing out the universe in every language he knows and a few he doesn’t, all in his head because if he tries to speak, he might throw up.

He pries his eyes open and groans when light assaults him.

“Steve?”

Someone touches Steve’s arm. James.

“The light,” Steve manages to grunt. “Kill it.”

He thinks James laughs. He kills the light. Steve misses the gentle touch on his arm, which is more than a little ridiculous. The second attempt to open his eyes is slightly better. He still screws them shut a second later because _there’s still light_.

“I can’t kill the sun, Steve,” James says, and yeah, he’s definitely laughing. “Though for you, I’d try.”

“And they say romance is dead.”

He tries to roll over and smother himself with his pillow. It’s half successful. The light fucks off.

A finger prods his ass.

“You awake?”

Steve raises an arm and flips James off.

“Guess you are,” James says, sounding more relieved that the situation warrants—

As if that flips some unseen memory switch, Steve remembers, in vivid detail, exactly why he’s in this situation.

Maybe James does have good reason for sounding like that.

He has to try hard to peel himself off the mattress. James helps, his hands a solid support, keeping Steve from collapsing face-first and probably passing out again. The light’s more bearable when Steve sits facing away from the window. James climbs into bed and sits cross-legged opposite Steve. He’s dressed in just a pair of loose pants, and he should look cozy and cuddly but his whole being radiates tension.

Steve still wants to cuddle him, but that’s Steve’s default mode these days.

“I freaked you out,” Steve says, “didn’t I?”

James gives him a thin smile.

“Just a little,” he says, in a tone that makes it clear it wasn’t a little.

“Come here?”

James is close enough that he just has to shuffle forward a little for Steve to touch him. He doesn’t kiss James because he wouldn’t subject his worst enemy to his mouth right now, but James’s eyes flutter closed when Steve strokes his hair and pets his face, and yeah, he can do that, he can fix those lines of trembling tension.

“I’m alright,” Steve says. “Lived through worse, sweetheart.”

James opens one eye to glare at him. He reminds Steve of a cat, angry and needy at the same time.

“She messed with your head,” James hisses. “ _Again_.” 

The knot of discomfort in Steve’s chest tightens at that. He knows why that’s sensitive for James. Steve, with the holes in his memory, isn’t unaffected either.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “Yeah, she did. Thanks for trying to save me. You got my signal?”

“Of course.” James opens his eyes but drops his head into Steve’s hands, breathing deep, chest and stomach moving with it. “But I was out before. Natasha sent me an emergency message after you left. And even then—”

“The smoke.”

“Yeah.” James lifts his head, eyes narrowing. “You remember that?”

“The smoke? Of—”

“Not that. Waking up earlier. Talking to me.”

“Oh. Yeah, yeah, I—it’s a little hazy. But I remember.”

He remembers kissing James, brimming with desperation, but he doesn’t know why he was so desperate. And he thinks he said—

“Did I tell you I was meant to find you?”

James straightens up. He’s still so close that Steve can breathe his warmth, but even that scant distance feels like too much. This is a problem, probably. It will be a worse one if Steve can’t shake it when they head out again.

“You did,” James says, frowning, watching Steve intently. “And then you fell unconscious.”

Steve wants to make a joke, but faced with that expression on James’s face, all he can do is nod.

“Steve, why did you say that?”

Steve would love to give him an answer. But he doesn’t have one.

“I don’t know. I really don’t.”

“What did she show you?”

_Stubborn son of a bitch—_

_Bucky—_

_—this is my choice._

_—Captain—_

“Steve, Steve!”

James’s hands are gripping his shoulders, fingers digging in painfully. That’s good, grounding, but Steve can still hear those echoes, taste a scream in the back of his throat.

“I can’t tell you,” Steve says, and when something like betrayal breaks across James’s face, he corrects it, quickly, to, “No, not like that. I’d tell you if I knew how. It was just…images. But they were so real. More than the vision before. There was something wrong then. I could _feel_ it. This wasn’t like that. It was a jumble of things, like I was there, but it didn’t make any fucking sense—”

“Ssh,” James says, rubbing Steve’s shoulders and arms, concern clear in his eyes. “Don’t force it. That won’t end well. Trust me.”

Steve drags in a shaky breath. Nods.

“It wasn’t real,” James murmurs. “It’s never real.”

 _Wasn’t it?_ asks a voice in the back of Steve’s head. He wishes it sounded like the Scarlet Witch, but he knows it’s his own voice, unhappy and suspicious.

“Where’s Romanova?” he asks out loud.

“Still on their tail. We made contact while you were out. She looks ragged.”

“We should be helping.”

“We will be. Soon.”

“How soon?”

“Twenty-four hours, give or take. She’s got intel that they’re going to hit a S.H.I.E.L.D base in Siberia. They’ve assigned us a STRIKE team as backup.”

Steve blinks.

“Maybe you should have led with that, James.”

James doesn’t even look sorry.

“There were other important concerns.”

“Like?”

“You.”

Steve’s stunned to silence by the way James says it—like it’s obvious, like it’s that simple.

 _I think I was meant to find you_ , Steve said. He remembers, with growing clarity, the utter conviction he felt when he said it. The same that’s now echoed in James’s pursed lips and steely eyes.

“James,” Steve hears himself say, “were you dusted, three years ago?”

James briefly looks bewildered. Why wouldn’t he? It came out of the blue for him. Steve never meant to actually ask, least of all when Wanda Maximoff told him to. If pressed, he still won’t be able to say why he’s doing it now.

James just stares at him for a long time. Steve half expects to be told to fuck off, but James answers in the end.

“No. I was working for the Red Room in those years, after my…”

He curls his left hand into a fist. The plates along the forearm calibrate with a series of oddly pleasant sounds. Steve can’t help reaching for it, trailing his flesh fingers over James’s metal ones, grasping his fist in his own. James unfurls his hand and turns it over, interlinking his fingers with Steve.

It hurts to watch their joint hands. The good kind of hurt, deep and throbbing.

“After your fall,” Steve completes quietly.

“Yes,” James murmurs. “I woke to a world I didn’t recognize. But that had less to do with Thanos and more with my own head.”

“You remember the Resurrection?”

James smiles, but it’s not a pleasant expression.

“Would you believe that I was asleep when it happened? I woke up to chaos. Natasha was the one who told me.”

He’s not lying. Steve hasn’t known James long, but he’s pretty fucking sure none of this is a lie. At the very least, James believes what he is saying. Steve doesn’t know why that thought even occurs to him. He can’t shake the feeling that something’s not right.

“Where were you?” James asks.

“Alaska,” Steve answers mechanically. “I wasn’t Cap then. Training camp with new recruits. I remember it happening.”

It wasn’t fun. He remembers watching the news, days later, from a hospital bed. Tony Stark addressing the world, his teammates beside him. Captain Marvel with one arm charred from fingertip to shoulder, grinning fiercely through the pain. Thor’s electric eyes.

The memories are clear, but there’s something about them that nags at him. A sense that he’s missing something.

“Why did you ask?” James asks, pulling Steve out of his muddled mind. “Right now, why did you bring it up?”

“It was something she said,” Steve says honestly, unsurprised when James’s expression darkens. “James, something doesn’t feel right.”

“Steve—”

“I know it wasn’t real,” he cuts it, brutally crushing the little voice that pipes up to ask if he’s sure. “I _know_. And I don’t like being made to question my memories any more than you do. But this whole thing—I get the feeling there’s more to it than meets the eye.”

He can see the conflict in James—how much he just wants to categorically refuse any possibility other than the most obvious. The Twins are their mission. They’ve got to complete their mission. Not black and white but easy, at least. Simple, if only in theory.

But Steve’s never found it all that simple. It’s not his nature. Sometimes, he wishes it were, but no, not really. James is not like him. They don’t even work for the same people. But none of that stops Steve from looking at the battle visibly raging in James’s mind and hoping.

James gives in with a long, tired sigh.

“I will not say I don’t have questions,” he admits. “But I don’t know if it matters, asking them.”

“It always matters,” Steve says quietly. “When a situation is pointed south, we can’t ignore it, James. People like us, we—we have a gift. Whether we asked for it or not. We have a responsibility too.”

James stares at him.

It’s intense, his face wiped of all expression save for the eyes. They burn cold. Steve feels like that stare is skewering his soul.

He meets it dead-on.

“Captain America,” James says at the end, a corner of his mouth curling up. “Where did they find you, darling?”

Steve blinks, heat rising to his cheeks. James notices and his smile blooms into a brighter, fuller thing, burning itself into Steve’s mind, his soul.

“You might be in the wrong business, you know,” James says, reaching over to brush his knuckles over Steve’s blushing cheeks. “But I can’t say I’m sorry about it.”

“You’re not making much sense, pal.”

“Of course I am. We will be careful, yes? I do not trust the Maximoff girl. We cannot. But the truth—there is something Natasha likes to say. That the truth is not all things to all people all the time. We will try and find our own truth.”

Steve thinks, absurdly, that this is the moment he falls in love.

But no, of course not. He’s been falling from the start.

When he ambushes James this time, there’s no desperation, only a sweet and gentle need that makes his toes curl. He curls his fingers in James’s thick hair and doesn’t remember until too late that his mouth is fucking vile.

“Sorry,” he gasps, trying to pull back. “Morning breath, horrible—”

James rolls his eyes and climbs into Steve’s lap, kissing him full on the mouth.

“My threshold for horrible is beyond what you can imagine,” he says, smirking but soft in the eyes. “I want you every way, do you know? I hunger for the best and the worst of you.”

Steve grasps the back of James’s neck. It fits in his palm, warm with life. Steve is full of things he can’t name.

“Never had a chance in hell with you,” he tells James, marveling at him. “Not from the start.”

James swallows. His throat clicks dry. His eyes are wide and dark. Steve can see himself in his pupils, and he wonders how James sees him, whether he’s looking at Steve and feels the same awe Steve is feeling. It doesn’t matter if he’s not. Steve’s feelings don’t change.

“You think I did?” James asks. “ _Look_ at you.”

Steve can’t. He’s looking at James.

-

Steve wouldn’t have minded holing up with James in a cramped motel room forever, but they have a mission to finish and a new team to meet. The S.H.I.E.L.D agent sent to pick them up is Rumlow. Steve’s worked with him before. The guy’s efficient, but there’s something about him that makes Steve’s skin crawl. He’s pretty sure a part of it’s that Rumlow is not subtle about his interest and Steve is anything but interested.

“Cap,” he greets with a handshake that’s too tight and lingers too long. “Long time no see.”

“Rumlow.”

Steve grips back firmly and squashes the petty urge to crush his fingers to a pulp. He’s fairly sure Rumlow will like that a little too much, both Steve’s loss of control and the pain.

Maybe he attracts a type. But James has more compassion in his pinky finger than Rumlow does in his entire heart. He’s been on enough missions with them both to know.

When Rumlow extends his arm to James, he gives his metal arm. Steve takes a little too much pleasure in the wary glance Rumlow shoots the prosthetic before he shifts arms to take it. He lets go very fast.

“Winter Soldier,” Rumlow says and whatever caution he experienced earlier vanishes, replaced by his typical cocky grin. “Heard a lot about you. Red Room’s best, aren’t you?”

“I would like to see you say that to Natasha,” James says. “And it’s Barnes.”

Rumlow’s grin widens unsettlingly.

“Charmed. Shall we?”

Steve’s not looking forward to being in a car with Rumlow. Thankfully, there’s another agent in the driver’s seat and Rumlow rides shotgun, leaving Steve and James to happily squeeze into the backseat. It’s not a small car, but he and James are both big men with long fucking legs. Thankfully, they don’t have reservations about throwing their limbs all over each other.

Steve catches Rumlow’s keen stare in the rearview mirror. The man’s got pretty eyes, and Steve’s usual reaction to those isn’t the urge to punch them shut but well, men like Rumlow bring out the worst in him.

“Interesting friends you have,” James says on an exhale, too low for anyone but Steve to hear, even that only made possible by the serum-enhanced hearing.

“Not friends,” Steve responds the same way. “Teammates. Sometimes.”

“Am I the better choice?”

Steve squeezes James’s knee.

“Always.”

By mutual, unspoken agreement, they don’t talk to each other on the way. Rumlow and the other agent—not Rollins, who’s usually Rumlow’ second, but a woman Steve’s never met but finds familiar all the same—don’t speak either. The ride is as peaceful as it can be.

-

Romanova is there in the room, very clearly waiting for them. She and James exchange their customary rapid-fire Russian, and by this point, Steve is sure that the insults peppered in are their way of expressing affection.

Is that a Russian thing too? He’d ask Clint, but the guy went dark at the end of last year. Sitwell just said he’s in deep cover somewhere in Europe.

“Steve,” Romanova says when the two of them are finished.

Steve blinks. He’s pretty sure there’s never been that much warmth in her voice when she addressed him before.

“Natalia,” he dares. Beside him, James snorts.

She just smiles, lips red like smeared blood.

“Natasha,” she corrects. “It’s good to see you well. You up for this?”

“I heal fast,” Steve says, reeling just a little. “Not a hundred percent yet, but by tomorrow, I will be. Brief me.”

She seems surprised by that but rallies quickly, pulling out a datapad. It projects an image of a building that seems built into a snow-covered mountain. A steel door is all that’s visible. Blueprints follow.

“It’s a small base,” Natasha says. “Used to be a major R&D division. Ran on a skeleton crew but got abandoned after the Decimation.”

“Odd target. Do we know what the Twins want with it?”

“I didn’t get that far.”

“What did you get? And how?”

James shifts, a silent shadow. Natasha looks up, sharp eyes darting from Steve to James and back. Her face is pleasantly expressionless.

“Men are willing to part with information for many reasons, Steve. Money, sex, fear.”

“So you tortured them.”

Natasha grins. It’s a shark-like expression, too much sharp teeth. He can’t quite recognize her for a moment.

“I like that you assumed torture, not fucking. It was both, just so you know. Would it help if I said she was a very, very bad girl?”

Steve says nothing. She doesn’t seem to be expecting him to.

A few clicks, and she stands, putting the device away,

“All I’ve got, I’ve sent to you both. It’s not much, but I’ve done missions on less. I trust your ability to get us through, brave Captain.”

She winks at him on the way out. The door clicks shut and Steve turns to look at James, unsurprised to find him watching Steve, head tilted to the side, eyes intense.

“James,” Steve says, “I know you two do wetwork. And I’m not that righteous. The stars-and-stripes doesn’t mean I’m America’s golden boy.”

James briefly looks taken aback.

“Did you read my mind?” he asks, light but with an undercurrent of sincerity.

“Maybe I just know you that well.”

“Huh. I like that.”

“Not very spy-like of you, Agent Barnes.”

James flips him off, but that’s not much of an insult when it’s followed by a kiss.

“You sure you will be okay tomorrow?” he asks when they part, resting his forehead on Steve’s.

“I’m fine, James. A little tired, but I think my body’s worked through whatever the gas did.”

“It’s not your body I am worried about.”

“Oh. That’s…I’m still thinking. The things she said, the things I saw. None of it makes sense. But I want it to. I’m going to try and figure it out.”

“Stubborn,” James chides but he sounds fond. “I will help.”

“Yeah?”

“Mmhm. I said, didn’t I? That we will find our own truth.”

“Ours, huh? I like the sound of that.”

James draws back, grinning.

“Sap.”

Steve doesn’t deny it. He pulls James back into his arms and into a kiss, biting down hard on a teasing tongue to hear him gasp.

“I’ll show you how okay I feel, how about that?”

“I did say I do not worry for your body,” James says, happily groping said body. He doesn’t protest when Steve walks him to the bed. It’s too small to accommodate the two of them, so Steve kisses James once and steps around the cot, towards the second one lying a few feet away.

When he pushes them together and looks up, James has already stripped and is standing there gloriously naked.

He preens when he sees Steve staring. There’s pink on his cheeks, a reaction that doesn’t go away no matter how many times Steve loses himself in the beauty of him. Steve’s not complaining; he likes this side of James, the softness you wouldn’t see just looking at him.

Steve crawls across the beds and rises to his knees. James steps close, bare skin pressing to Steve’s clothes. Steve runs his hands all over him, along the slopes of his mismatched shoulders and down the muscled planes of his back. James basks in the touch, eyes half-closed in sweet surrender.

He lets Steve tug him into bed and put him on his back, lets him spread his legs and claim a spot between them. James’s body is a study in contrasts—it’s strong, thick, sturdy, but the skin under Steve’s hands is so soft and the way James shivers under whisper-soft touches is exquisitely delicate. Steve could spend an eternity touching him just to feel him, reverent, aimless.

James prods at him lazily with a toe.

“Why are you clothed? This is unfair.”

Steve considers that.

“Mmm no. I’m very comfortable here.”

“You can be more comfortable naked.”

Steve shrugs and strips off his shirt, and he likes the way James stares, eyes lingering on the swell of Steve’s chest. He idly flicks at his own nipple. The sensation is dull but James’s quiet whine makes his cock throb.

“Touch ‘em.”

James blinks up at him.

“Steve?”

“Your nipples, James. Touch them.”

James’s eyes are very wide. Steve gets an unholy thrill out of the expression on his face. Sweet thing looks shocked, as if this trumps him asking Steve to fuck him till he bled.

“Come on,” Steve coaxes, running his palms up James’s thighs, nails gently scarping the delicate skin. “Gimme a show, sweetheart.”

James’s pupils blow wide, black eating blue.

His flesh hand trembles when he brings it to his chest. The left one’s steady, thumb and forefinger closing in on a tight bud. James shudders at the touch. It must feel very different—one soft and warm, the other hard and cold.

“Harder.” Steve barely recognizes his own voice. It’s rough, hungry. “Want you crying, James.”

James’s eyes are very wide and he’s so, so good, obeying with barely a whine, fingers clamping tight on his own nipples. Steve sees the moment it hits him, the sharp shock of it. James’s mouth parts on a shuddering exhale, but it’s soft; all of him is soft now, stretched out and trembling. Steve wants to touch him, so he does, but he skirts around where James’s hands are cupped around his own chest, leaning over him instead, kissing him, eating his breathy gasps.

“Harder,” Steve repeats, lips brushing James’s jaw.

“You’re killing me,” James says, but he does as told, nails digging into the dark, swollen buds.

Steve kisses his jaw, his throat, mouth open over James’s pounding pulse. He takes the skin there between his teeth and shudders to feel James’s life pulse in his mouth. When he settles back between James’s thighs, the heat between his legs is a demanding ache.

He ignores it in favor of James, half-hard and flushed from it, his pretty cock lying against one milk-white thigh. He looks good enough to eat. Steve wants to devour.

“Keep going,” he orders, raising his voice to be heard over James’s ragged gasps.

James doesn’t stop, but he cries out when Steve licks at the head of him. His thighs try to clamp up when Steve takes him into his mouth, but they still at the touch of his hands, steely strength brought to heel by a gentle suggestion. Steve strokes them soothingly, sucking slow and lazy, letting James fill up on his tongue.

He pulls off, licking at the slit on the way. James whimpers but doesn’t try to chase his mouth, doesn’t stop abusing his chest. He’s red there now, a dark flush spreading down from his neck, all over his chest. He’s pinching his nipples, stretching them in a grip as merciless as anything Steve would use on him. It makes Steve so proud.

Hard to find a man like this. Harder to keep him.

He puts his mouth on James again, licking a dirty stripe along the length of him. A vein catches his eye, and he presses a kiss to it. He’s smiling and doesn’t know why, but there’s something about this, James plaint under him, warm with want, that fills him up inside, bubbling hot and airy in spaces he didn’t know existed.

Steve’s never been in love before. It’s a wonder, how natural it feels, how inevitable.

“Steve,” James calls, the name soft like a plea.

Steve looks up, catching James’s eye as he takes him in as deep as he can. He sees James’s eyes roll back, sees his hands freeze, sees him bring himself back under control with a sharp, gasping breath.

James is looking at Steve when he starts pinching his nipples again. Steve shows his approval with lips and tongue and the lightest graze of teeth. James leaks on his tongue and whines when Steve laps it up, the noise quiet and pitiful. He looks so wrecked, eyes wet and wild around the edges.

“Hurts,” he whimpers, fingers tight around his nipples.

Steve doesn’t say anything, just takes James deeper, letting the head hit the back of his throat. James shouts his name, back arching, thighs tense, but he doesn’t fuck up into Steve’s mouth, doesn’t stop hurting himself. And it must hurt, a raw, deep ache; it looks like it does.

“Don’t stop,” Steve pulls off James’s cock enough to say. “Not until I say, James.”

“Please,” James whines, whole palm cupping his tits, spasming helplessly like that will soothe him. “I can’t, it hurts, please.”

“You can,” Steve murmurs, drunk with power, with love. “You will.”

He can. He does. And he whines all the while, the sounds torn between pain and pleasure, and Steve rewards him with a warm, wet mouth, taking him deep and deeper until James comes down his throat with a keening cry.

Steve swallows every drop and laps at him after, sucking at the head as James goes soft.

“S-stop,” James gasps, wounded, broken open.

Steve lets up, straightening into a kneeling position. James is still kneading absently at his tits, eyes gone glassy. Steve leans over him, grasping his wrists and pulling it away from his body.

“Oh, god, thank you,” James sobs. His cheeks are wet with tears, eyes still bright. Steve kisses his slack mouth and licks at the salt on his skin, biting gently, playfully at one cheek. It shouldn’t hurt at all, but James whimpers like it’s killing him, and Steve kisses the sound out of his mouth, licking between his lips to share the taste of come and tears.

James shudders full-bodied under him.

Steve smiles when clumsy hands grope at his hips, pulling roughly at the waistband of his pants. He catches the offending limb and pins it to the bed, squeezing when James half-heartedly tries to pull it free.

“What do you want, hm?”

“You haven’t—lemme,” James says, squirming again. It’s nice, the solid warmth of his body rubbing up against Steve’s. “Steve, please.”

“Want me to come?”

“ _Please_.”

“Ssh. You’re so sweet, honey.”

James sucks in a wet breath, a little like he’ll start crying again. Steve peppers kisses all over his hot, tear-stained face and drags his mouth the curve of his throat, nipping idly at patches of skin. James swears when Steve brushes his lips over his swollen nipples. The skin there’s blood-hot, and Steve’s tongue pressing flat on the buds must be a balm and an ache, all at once.

James begs, whimpering Steve’s name, and Steve doesn’t know what he’s begging for, doubts James knows either.

He stops with a few, lazy licks at both nipples. They’re a pretty sight, red and inflamed. It’s a pity how fast James heals, at least in this. But then, good excuse for Steve to put his hands and his mouth and his cock on him, in him, over and over and over.

Not that he needs an excuse; James is easy, open, and Steve hasn’t been able to resist from the moment James looked at him with whiskey-warm eyes.

He tugs at James’s hand, and James sits up, shaky and dazed, more undone after a few minutes of being loved on than he ever is after fights that leave him bleeding from half a dozen places. It’s good fuel for a man’s ego.

Steve rises to his knees and pushes his pants down. James’s eyes widen.

“Come on then,” Steve says, wrapping a hand around his cock. “Help me out.”

There’s barely contained frenzy in how James throws himself forward, getting on his hands and knees, getting his mouth on Steve. He’s hungry for it, taking it deep till he chokes and coming back for more, throat convulsing around the head of Steve’s cock.

It heats his blood, melts his bones. James is so sweet, his mouth so willing, and Steve takes advantage, of course, he does, sinking his fingers into that thick hair and gripping tight to hold James in place.

James’s eyes flutter closed, expression smoothening into serenity even as he chokes on Steve’s cock.

Steve doesn’t last nearly as long as he wants to. Can’t, with James so wet and hot around him.

Some of it trickles down James’s chin; there’s a look in his eyes that says he made a mess on purpose. The sight nearly makes Steve go again. He wants to push his softening cock back into James’s mouth and fucking stay there until he’s ready for more. He doesn’t, though, tucking himself away and pressing his thumb hard against James’s pouting lips.

He uses the thumb to swipe up the mess and push it into James’s mouth. He opens up easy and sucks the finger clean, the soft heat of his tongue pulsing deep in Steve’s gut.

“You’re a menace,” Steve says fondly.

James just rubs his face against Steve’s hand like an oversized cat.

There’s not much of a mess to clean up, for once. Steve strips off what’s left of his clothing and curls up with James, their tangled bodies somehow fitting into one bed.

“We should read the files,” James says to Steve’s throat and makes no attempt to move.

“In a while,” Steve says, stroking James’s hair. “We have till morning.”

“Gotta sleep too.”

“Not right now, we don’t.” Steve pinches James’s hip and earns himself a deeply wounded whine. “Hm. Maybe a nap.”

James makes a pleased sound not unlike a purr. He really is too much like a cat. Steve loves him.

It feels nice to think that. Maybe he’ll say it out loud one of these days, when he’s ready.

Soon, he hopes. He wants to be ready soon.

“James?”

“Mm?”

“After this clusterfuck is over, we’re going on a goddamn date.”

James’s whole body jolts with laughter.

“Little late to wine and dine me, Captain. You already stole my virtue.”

He swats James’s ass and isn’t even mildly surprised when he wriggles them, asking for more. He squeezes a plump cheek and leaves his hand there, idly groping the flesh.

“Maybe I just want a pretty guy on my arm, Barnes.”

James pulls back to peer up at Steve, shit-eating grin firmly in place.

“I am very pretty,” he says.

Steve kisses him, quick and hard, overwhelmed with giddy excitement. He feels like a kid, a smitten boy. He’s been missing out.

“You are,” Steve agrees. “What about it, huh? Gonna let me play the gentleman.”

“Of course,” James murmurs, smiling against Steve’s mouth. “If you promise not to be gentle afterwards.”

“Well, that’s no hardship.”

“Then it’s a date.”

-

Two teams—Steve leads one and has James take the other. It’s tempting beyond words to keep James close, but the two of them in a four-man team is overkill and leaves the other unbalanced. Steve takes Natasha and winks at James when he frowns, subtly, at being left with Rumlow.

“Good luck,” Steve tells James before the Quinjet lands.

James claps him on the back and doesn’t take his hand away immediately.

“Be careful,” he says softly. “She’s the enemy.”

“I know,” Steve replies, equally hushed.

James slants him a wary glance which breaks into a crooked smile.

It doesn’t feel like an ending, then. It feels like the beginning.

-

“Ominous,” is Natasha’s comments.

Steve, looking the object of that statement, agrees wholeheartedly.

Five tanks line the room, empty and rusted. They don’t seem to have been in use for a long time, but Steve’s having a hard time figuring out what they were used for in the first place.

They can easily hold a human being. They’d have to be sitting. The tanks are built to accommodate that.

He doesn’t know why he thinks that. He doesn’t know why his gut twists at the sight of them.

“Let’s move,” he barks and only the ease of long practice keeps his voice steady.

It should be relieving to have the tanks out of sight, but the deeper they get, the more unsettled Steve becomes. He’s hit with a sharp sense of déjà vu every other minute even though he’s never been to this base before. A lot of S.H.I.E.L.D facilities look the same, but those are the modern ones, full of sleek metal and holographic data. This is much, much older and utterly alien.

Except when it’s not.

A corridor branches into two, both winding deep into the darkness. Steve signals for them to split up and is unsurprised but oddly relieved when Natasha shadows him.

“I don’t like this place much,” she murmurs, so quiet that she must be banking on Steve’s enhanced hearing. “Do you?”

“No.”

An understatement. But Steve’s not in the mood for conversation.

They had overhead video, grainy but adequate, of the Twins heading inside fifteen minutes ago. They haven’t left the way they entered. Steve just wishes it felt less like an ambush. They should be the hunters, but the cold sweat on his neck screams _prey_.

He really fucking doesn’t like this place.

The path they picked leads to another room—small, cramped, with rust on the hinges and old paint peeling off the walls. Steve doesn’t have much time to take in the décor; his attention is arrested by the two tanks looming on the far side of the room—

—and the man standing in between them.

“He’s here,” Natasha snaps into the comms.

“On our way,” answers an agent.

“Two against one?” asks Pietro Maximoff. “Now that’s not fair.”

Steve hurls the shield at him.

It rebounds off the wall and doesn’t make it back into his palm. Glass shatters, one of the great tanks shattering.

Maximoff is a blur; even Steve’s eyes can’t see more than a smear of blue and white. It’s enough. He blocks a punch, kicks out with a leg that doesn’t connect.

Natasha’s knife slices through the air where Maximoff stood a millisecond ago. Bullets break more glass.

Steve leaps for his shield and narrowly avoids Maximoff’s charge. The sharp edge of the vibranium is cold comfort when his target won’t stay in place for even a second.

“Where’s the Soldier?” Pietro asks, making a show of looking around even as he dances out of Natasha’s reach. “He’s my favorite.”

Steve doesn’t why the mention of James makes him see red. _Hell of a liability_ , he teased James earlier, and he feels it now, but he’s got good practice turning blood-burning rage into strength.

He gets a glimpse of shocked blue eyes as Steve throws himself headfirst against his scant physical limits.

Pietro is faster, but Steve is stronger, more agile, his body tailor-made for war. Natasha is a shadow winding through the spaces where he’s not, wielding knives like they’re an extension of herself.

They corner him, and he’s just a wild-eyed boy, looking decades younger than his sister even though they’re twins. Steve slams the edge of his shield into the kid’s belly and feels an odd pang when he doubles over, coughing red-specked spittle.

He crushes the sympathy and jams the muzzle of his gun under Pietro’s jaw. He catches the flash of familiar fury and drives his fist into his gut. Pain turns Pietro’s face bloodless but he doesn’t scream, doesn’t so much as whimper.

“Don’t,” Steve warns. “You know how this ends.”

Pietro’s eyes flickers to something behind Steve and narrows. Steve can feel Natasha at his back and hear the approaching footsteps as two rapid heartbeats join them in the room.

“Too late, Captain,” he says. “My sister has him.”

Ice slithers down Steve’s spine.

“James,” he snaps into the comms. “Soldier, report.”

There’s no response. James’s entire team is silent. The ice turns jagged, sinking cold teeth all along Steve’s body.

He pushes the gun into the soft give of Pietro’s jaw, snarling when he chokes and tries to struggle.

“Where is he?”

“Too—late—”

“ _Tell me_.”

“C-can’t—breathe—”

Steve pistol-whips him. Pietro stumbles against the wall and is pinned there, Steve’s hand tight around his throat.

“This ends here,” Steve growls, fury feeding off the worry, silence ringing in his ears. “No more games.”

Pietro is unnaturally calm when he says, “Of course, Captain. That’s why you’re here.”

The tranq sinks into Steve’s thigh.

Two more quickly follow, his back and side, their poison seeping into his bloodstream.

It shouldn’t be enough. Like the smoke shouldn’t have been enough. Unless—

Steve corrals his heavy limbs just enough turn his torso to the side. He drops to his knees just in time to watch the S.H.I.E.L.D agents drop, neat red holes in their heads.

“Na…ta…sha…”

It’s not a gun that she turns on him. The fourth tranq sinks into his neck.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” is the last thing he hears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come yell at me ;)


	6. am i just a ghost in my own machine (they say there's no escaping)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's not fair, but the naked, ugly truth is that if Bucky looks at him and doesn’t recognize him, then Steve…he’s not Steve then, is he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is my favorite chapter for this fic. You'll see why ;)
> 
> CW: This chapter has a brief instance of Steve hurting himself (sinking his nails into his palms and watching it heal) soon after he gets the serum, trying to see if it’s all real.

Bucky’s still wearing his uniform.

Steve tried to strip him, but Bucky knocked his hands away and dropped to his knees, and Steve’s only human but god, this must be sacrilege—Bucky’s pressed olive now creased and askew, his clean-shaved chin messy with spit, his smiling cheeks a blotchy red.

All for Steve. Because of him.

Bucky’s nails dig into his hips, scraping over the protruding bone there. Maybe he should feel small; Bucky’s hands are big enough to nearly envelop his hips. But he doesn’t. How can he when there’s a pretty man on his knees, keening like he’ll die if Steve doesn’t choke him with his dick.

He fists his hand in Bucky’s hair. It’s dry and sticky from product, but it’s been a mess since before Steve got his hands on it. He messes it up more anyway, yanking at the dark strands and fighting not to lose it when Bucky moans around his cock.

Steve pulls his head back harshly and can’t swallow a gasp when his cock slips out of Bucky’s mouth. It’s drowned out by Bucky’s whine, high and needy. He blinks up at Steve with blue eyes gone dark and wet, and god, this man can’t be real, he can’t be Steve’s.

“Lemme,” Bucky says, “Stevie, _please_ —”

He breaks off, breath hitching, and no one should look so good on the verge of tears, no one should _be_ on the verge of tears because they can’t suck dick, but Bucky does, Bucky is, and that terrible hunger that always churns in the pit of Steve’s belly lashes out again, yearning to swallow this man whole.

“No,” he says, tugging Bucky upwards and he’s not strong enough to manhandle Bucky—Bucky, who came back from basic with a new rank and a brighter smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes—

He’s not strong enough physically, but he doesn’t need to be. Touch him right, and Bucky’s putty.

“I want to fuck you,” Steve says, and Bucky stumbles over his own feet, clumsy the way he never is in the dance halls, and looks at Steve like he hung the moon.

“Please,” he says, bright-eyed and so damn sweet that Steve forgets his jealousy, forgets Erskine and his own secrets, and spends the night pulling more of those sweet, shuddering pleas out of Bucky with lips and teeth and hands and cock.

And when it’s over, when they’re spent and curled up together, Bucky presses his face to the back of Steve’s neck and says, “I’m coming back.”

Steve holds his breath, then lets it out. His lungs know too much of burning, but now, it’s his heart that aches with frustrated fire.

“Of course you’re coming back,” Steve says.

Bucky huffs and shuffles closer, curling his big, warm body around Steve’s cold, spindly limbs, and god, it was hell, sleeping alone without him, and Steve’s as guilty as he’s grateful that he won’t be here long after Bucky ships out tomorrow.

“I mean it,” Bucky says softly. “I’ll come back here. To you.”

Steve’s never understood how bucky could say these things so easily, give himself over so wholly. But he’s glad for it, greedy the way he’s always been, and he soaks it up, his fingers gripping Bucky’s tight.

“I know you will,” he says and very carefully doesn’t wonder whether _he_ will.

.

.

.

_I asked for an army and all I got was you. You’re not enough, but you’re going to fucking have to be. Carter!_

The words ring in Steve’s ears, and his chest burns from Erskine’s dying gesture. His chest doesn’t feel like his own. It doesn’t feel real. None of this does.

He sinks his nails into his palms until they bleed and watches, unblinking, as the tiny indents seal themselves. It’s real. This is his body. He watched two men die in the span of an hour; he almost died.

He curls his hand into a fist but jumps and wipes the blood off on his pants as the sharp clacking of heels approach his door, already familiar. Peggy opens the door, controlled and furious, and a part of Steve is quietly thrilled that he can already read her well. The rest of him is preoccupied by how the scent of her perfume, mixed with sweat, is potent even though they’re on opposite sides of the room. It’s not the perfume’s fault.

Steve’s nose, his…everything, it’s—

“Colonel Phillips has got Brandt to lay off,” she says, clipped.

“The colonel?” Steve asks carefully. “Or you?”

Peggy smiles and for a moment, the red of her lipstick looks like blood.

“The Senator is not the sort to let a woman set the terms,” she says, voice dipping on _woman_ in a way that makes it clear she’s imitating someone. Steve’s already got his back to the wall, but he kind of wants to crawl into it right now.

His discomfort must be obvious; he’s never been a good actor. Peggy takes a good look at him, blinks, and it’s like the anger slides off her. It reminds him uncomfortably of Bucky, the way he’d close his eyes and exhale the fury, the pain, and smile, bright as anything and so beautiful that you’d be fooled about the storm his sea-blue eyes couldn’t quite hide.

A lot of things about Peggy remind Steve of Bucky, even the coloring. He can’t help the way he gravitates towards her, and she looks at him like he’s worth looking at, same as she did when he didn’t have this new body that makes men and women eye him like vultures, and it’s nothing like the bright-eyed way Bucky has looked at him since he was six, but it’s _something_. 

She’s familiar and comfortable, and they click, and Steve doesn’t want anything but a friend, but god, he _needs_ a friend.

He swallows when he realizes he’s been silently staring at her for long enough that the air between them is distinctly heavy. He smiles and Peggy frowns.

“Are you alright, Steve?”

The genuine concern in her voice makes his smile a little less plastic.

“Yeah, I—yeah. Just…eager. To get started. And out of here.”

“Tired of hiding from the Senator?” she asks knowingly. Steve’s dignity died a slow death in the labs while an army of white coats poked and prodded at—at everything, and admitting to hiding from Brandt is far easier than explaining that _no, doctor, I think you have enough semen samples_.

“Well, I’ve got good news then,” Peggy says, smiling and her mouth looks bloody again, curved sharply up. “We need you out there. But first, I’m going to whip you into shape, Steve.”

Steve tries not to cower.

“I look forward to it,” he says, and the damned thing is that he means it.

.

.

.

When they’re finally alone, the first thing Bucky says is, “You’re a thrice-damned son of a bitch, you fucking _idiot_.”

Steve would have been offended once, but it’s been less than twenty-fours since he walked into a factory expecting, deep inside the coldest part of his heart, to find the _body_ of his best friend and the love of his fucking life, and he doesn’t have the space for anything but mind-numbing relief.

Still, he makes a swipe at normalcy and says, “No need to talk about my ma like that, Buck. You know she was an angel.”

Bucky pins him with an expression that’s nothing like anything Steve’s ever seen on him. There’s no answering quip, not even more cursing, just that steady stare—it’s not even a glare. Anger would almost be more comforting than this strange blankness.

Steve’s bursting with the need to say something, anything, but he bites his tongue, holds Bucky’s stare, and waits.

It pays off.

“That really you?”

If there was even a hint of an actual _question_ in Bucky’s voice, Steve might have broken, something buried deep shattering, and he would have tried his damn best not to show it, the way he used to grit his teeth and walk through the pain after a bully or his own body turned on him. It’s unfair to Bucky, he’s sure. Steve doesn’t recognize himself in the mirror sometimes, even though between Peggy and the blood on his hands, he’s learned this body as well he learned his old one.

It's not fair, but the naked, ugly truth is that if Bucky looks at him and doesn’t recognize him, then Steve…he’s not Steve then, is he?

There’s no Steve Rogers without Bucky Barnes. That’s the truth etched into his soul.

But it’s not really a question, what Bucky said. He’s not doubtful, just resigned, so similar to the way he sounded whenever he fished Steve out of a dumpster or carefully bandaged his bloody knuckles.

Similar, but not the same. Brooklyn’s Bucky never sounded so tired. His eyes were never so hollow. But this isn’t that Bucky, any more than Steve is that dumb kid who ran face-first into fists. His heart still burns the same, but he hears screams and sees blood in his dreams, and there are some things you can’t live through without changing.

Looking at Bucky, he knows it’s the same for him. But it doesn’t matter that they’re no longer who they used to be; it’s still Bucky, still Steve.

So he smiles at Bucky, crooked and real, and says, “Yeah, Buck. It’s me.”

Bucky makes a soft, pained sound deep in his throat and stumbles forward. He didn’t drink a drop and the stumble in his step isn’t because of alcohol. Steve catches him by the arms and pulls him close, and he feels it too, that weak, shuddering throb in his knees, threatening to take them both down.

“Jesus,” Bucky says, all his weight on Steve. He can take it easily and that’s—somehow, this is what drives it home for good. Not the chamber, not that mad chase through the streets, not Peggy’s brutal training, and not even the men who died at his hands, but Bucky, hanging off Steve’s arms in a way that would have sent them both toppling to the floor once.

Steve’s changed, his body more weapon than man, but he’s got his best guy pressed up against him, warm and alive, and he’d do all this again a hundred times over to save Bucky Barnes.

The kiss takes him by surprise. It’s hard, brutal and biting the way Bucky rarely is, but after a second of stunned stillness, he kisses back just as hard, trying to crawl into Bucky through his warm, clumsy mouth.

“Well,” Bucky says, pulling back as abruptly as he crashed into Steve, “they didn’t fix that.”

It takes Steve a moment to understand and when he does, he sees red. He digs his fingers into Bucky’s arms, but he’s careful. Once, he broke a captain’s arm in training because he didn’t watch his strength. He still remembers the horror on his face and the sharp calculation in Peggy’s eyes.

“There’s nothing to fix,” he says quietly, vehemently.

Bucky blinks, eyes wide and transfixed, and says nothing for a very long time.

In the end, he says, “No. There isn’t,” and Steve deflates, relief warring with caution at the soft, slightly dazed look on Bucky’s face. It’s like he’s looking at Steve and not seeing him at all, but it fades after a moment, replaced by piercing scrutiny as Bucky straightens and takes Steve’s face between his palms.

Steve lets him look, pretending his heart isn’t about to burst out of his ribs. Bucky’s quiet again, but his fingers move, gently tracing the lines of Steve’s face—a face he’s touched a thousand times but it wouldn’t feel like that now, would it?

“Stevie,” Bucky says, and Steve lets out a shuddering sigh at the pet name, beloved and horrifying but more the former now. “Sweetheart, you—I can’t tell you how this feels.”

Steve laughs, quiet and not wholly amused. He steals a quick kiss, and Bucky makes a soft sound. Steve can feel him tremble.

“I can imagine,” he says.

Something twists in Bucky’s expression. He smiles at Steve, and the curve of his lips is right but the light in his eyes is not.

“No, pal. I don’t think you can.”

Steve has the sudden, sinking feeling that they’re not talking about his body anymore.

.

.

.

“It’s killing you, and it’s killing me to see it.”

It comes out a blend of angry and desperate, and it must show on his face because he can see the moment Bucky’s comeback withers on his tongue.

“Stubborn son of a bitch,” he hisses, and Steve can hear the surrender. “ _Fine_. Fine.”

Bucky’s weakness has always been his soft spot for Steve and ever since he can remember, Steve’s been smug and furious about that in equal parts. Right now, though, all he feels is relief. He kisses Bucky, and they really are just a convenient tree away from the Howlies, but it’s not like they don’t know and if they care, they sure haven’t shown it.

Bucky groans curses into the kiss but gives as good as he gets, and in the end, he’s the one who drags Steve deeper into the forest and shoves him against a tree and sticks a hand down his pants.

Steve’s eyes cross. This is dangerously foolish; it’s pitch dark and they’ve got a mission in a few hours, but Bucky’s mouth is sweet and his hand on Steve’s cock is warm, and the heat of it all seeps through the cold to sink deep into his bones.

Steve returns the favor, one arm around Bucky to hold him steady, and they jack each other off, fast and frantic and on the wrong side of rough, and Steve feels almost as alive as he does when he’s running through a hail of bullets like a mad god.

“I love you,” he rasps when he comes, spilling lust and love, and Bucky groans and shudders and slumps on Steve, and he thinks, then, that it’ll be alright. They’ll talk about what’s eating at Bucky, and Steve will maybe learn to chase away the shadows in his eyes, and it still won’t be the same, _they_ won’t be the same, but they’re Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes and that’s enough—

.

.

.

—but it isn’t, and Bucky falls screaming through the snow. Steve’s rage brings Hydra to its knees, and then it’s his turn to fall.

He closes his eyes as the ice rises up to meet him, and he isn’t scared because wherever he’s going, Bucky’s there too.

.

.

.

“Dobroye utro, Captain Rogers,” says a man he’s never seen before. “You’ve been asleep for a very long time.”

He tries to move, instinctual, but there’s thick metal across his arms and legs and his vision fades in and out of focus.

“Start the procedure,” says the same man. “Apologies for the rush, Captain. But we cannot take chances with a man like you. You understand, yes?”

.

.

.

The Soldier is familiar.

Many things are familiar to him—faces of handlers he’s never seen before, sounds of languages he’s never heard, weapons in his hands that he’s never touched, labyrinthine streets of cities he’s never visited. The Captain wakes to a world he half remembers and knows, deep in his bones, that he’s woken like this before, many times.

But the Soldier is familiar in a different way.

He is like the Captain. Not quite human. Not quite real.

He moves like a river, all lethal grace, and when they fight, he leaves bruises that the Captain touches with soft, reverent fingers in the fleeting moments before his skin swallows them whole. He wants to touch the Soldier’s bleeding mouth the same way.

Now, they stand at opposite ends of a room, guns pointed at each other’s heads, and the Captain’s finger doesn’t tremble on the trigger. He’s bleeding and bruised from the Soldier’s fists and knives, and the Soldier is no better; his right arm is limp at his side and the left has blood stuck in the grooves of its palm.

“Excellent,” says the handler. “You’re ready.”

.

.

.

They’re in a forest, the rest of the squad is dead, and the extraction team is three hours late.

“Guess we weren’t ready,” he says.

The Soldier starts, blue eyes lined with black flying to the Captain’s face. It’s hard to read the Soldier’s face with the mask, but somehow, the Captain knows there’s surprise splashed gracelessly across his features.

After a long pause, the Soldier speaks.

“What?”

“Lukin said we were ready,” the Captain tells him. “Don’t you remember?”

The Soldier’s frown is obvious, his eyebrows knitting together. He understands if the Soldier doesn’t remember. Half the time, he doesn’t either. He remembers the Soldier, though, in flashes of white and red.

“Lukin’s dead.”

The Captain blinks.

“Oh. When?”

The Soldier shrugs. He’s not looking at the Captain anymore, staring at his hands instead. There’s something wrong with his metal arm. His fist won’t close all the way, and he walks like he’s in pain. He doesn’t show it, not really. But the Captain knows anyway.

“It’s fine,” the Captain says, finding himself strangely eager to draw the Soldier’s bruised blue eyes back to himself. “I didn’t much like him.”

The Soldier makes a sound that’s not laugher but isn’t anything else either. His eyes are still downcast but his frown is gone. It would be easy to see a smile without the mask.

He’s never seen the Soldier’s face. Or, if he has, he doesn’t remember.

The Captain moves without quite meaning to. He doesn’t make a sound stepping over wet mulch, but the Soldier’s head snaps up, eyes sharp and wary. But he doesn’t get up from where he’s slumped against a tree, and the Captain kneels beside him, close enough to smell the blood on the Soldier.

He reaches out, and fingers clamp tight around his wrist. It’s the Soldier’s right hand, so there’s no danger of him crushing bone, but it hurts anyway, a throbbing ache that sinks through flesh.

The Captain finds himself smiling. The Soldier’s eyes are on him, wide and wild.

“I just want to see your face,” he says. “I won’t hurt you.”

The Soldier says nothing and his grip doesn’t loosen, but he lets the Captain tugs his hand free and touch his mask. It’s as black as their uniforms, but the design is different from what the Captain remembers.

He wonders why the Soldier’s the only one with a mask.

He tugs it away.

The Soldier is handsome.

Without the mask, his long hair frames his face. There’s stubble on his jaw and his lips are cracked, and he’s—

Familiar.

The Captain knows this face. He knows many things without remembering them, and it stands to reason that he’s seen the Soldier’s face before. He must have. This can’t be their first mission together.

But there’s something—

He doesn’t realize what’s done until his mouth is on the Soldier’s. It’s a glancing thing—warm and the barest impression of softness. He pulls back, frowning, and the Soldier’s face is as blank as ever, but the look in his eyes—

“I know you,” says the Soldier.

He can’t breathe.

.

.

.

“They lasted longer this time.”

“They will last longer next time. And when they look at each other and see nothing but strangers, we will know we have succeeded. Ah, Captain, you’re awake—”

.

.

.

His target’s a woman—dark hair and dark eyes and a mouth like a bleeding wound. There’s no fear in her, no horror, just fists and knives and the sure strikes of arms that have known death.

She throws the Captain into a wall and puts a bullet in his stomach, another in his thigh, and he rolls away, gritting his teeth at the pain and not making a sound.

Cool air hits his face as his mask loosens and falls.

And the woman, she stills.

It’s a mistake.

“Steve?” she says and falls, a neat hole in her forehead.

“Who the hell is Steve?” he asks, but her corpse can’t answer.

.

.

.

“Kid, you’ve got to hit harder than that if you wanna stand a chance.”

She bares her teeth and sends a chunk of concrete flying at his head. Stefan leaps out of the way, laughing because yes, point taken.

“I _know_ ,” he tells her. “But you won’t always have your powers, Wanda.”

She slices her red-coated hand and another bit of the shattered ground flies at Steve. It’s smaller than the last one but easily bigger than his head. This time, Stefan stands his ground and punches the rock.

It shatters, along with two of his fingers, but he ignores the pain and charges, and Wanda’s eyes are wide and shocked when his other hand wraps around her throat.

“You’re powerful,” Stefan tells her, “and one day, you’ll be monstrous. But you can’t rely on your magic to keep you alive, Wanda. Not in this world.”

He lets her go, and she stumbles back a few steps. But her fear morphs into a familiar look of determination, and Stefan laughs again, loud and unfettered, when she comes at him with both fists swinging.

“It’s not fucking magic,” she says, ducking under Stefan’s arm.

“Language,” he gasps.

She loses, a kick to the stomach sending her flying, and she doesn’t cushion her fall with sinuous red but stands up anyway, eyes blazing. Stefan beams.

“That’s it for the day, kid. You’re doing well.”

The praise flusters her. It always does. But Stefan can see her smile even as she ducks her face. He throws his arm around her shoulders as they walk to the door and tries not to not to flinch when her slight frame settles against his bulk. For all that he calls her kid, it’s easy to ignore her age when she’s throwing bits of the wall at him. Not so easy now.

“I’ll buy you lunch,” he says, squeezing her thin shoulder before letting go. “My treat. There’s this nice Italian place in the town. I’ll go get you something. Pietro too.”

“Thank you,” she says softly. And then, after a pause, “Stefan?”

“Yeah?”

“What if I don’t want to be?”

“Want to be what?’

“A monster.”

Ah. He smiles at her and hopes it doesn’t seem too strained.

“You don’t have to be a monster, Wanda. I said monstrous. There’s a difference. But kid, the path you’ve chosen—you’ll need to be one or both to survive. For both of you to survive.”

Maybe it’s unfair, bringing up Pietro. He is Wanda’s greatness weakness and vice versa, and god, they’re bad at hiding it. He can’t even blame them. Though he’s never had any family, he understands somehow.

Wanda nods, looking down at her feet, expression a cross between pained and considering. Stefan ruffles her hair and grins when she scowls.

“I’ll go grab your food. Don’t get impatient.”

“The food here’s shit,” she says. “I can wait.’

“ _Language_.”

He bites back laughter at her unimpressed frown and is still grinning when he rounds a corner and runs right into another body.

A rather familiar body, making a familiar grunt.

“Sasha!”

“Oh, it’s you.”

“You don’t sound very happy to see me.”

“I’m never happy to see you, Stefan.”

“Lies.”

Sasha rolls his eyes, sneering, and even with his expression twisted into harsh lines, he’s still damnably pretty.

“How’ve you been?” Stefan asks.

“Fine,” Sasha bites out. “Same as I was yesterday, when you asked the same inane question.”

“I love the way you talk.”

Sasha goes very still, then pushes away from Stefan, and Stefan kindly doesn’t mention that for someone who’s professed multiple times to loathe his company, Sasha was quite happy to stay plastered to him for a good five minutes. Even now, he’s not leaving, just standing in the middle of the corridor with his arms crossed, frowning at Stefan.

Impulsively, he asks, “I’m going to town to grab lunch. Come with me?”

“Why the fuck,” Sasha says with slow, cutting deliberation, “would I want to do that?”

“Because the food here’s shit? And sometimes looks like literal shit?”

A sour expression crosses Sasha’s face; Stefan imagines he’s also thinking of the more…interesting meals they’ve been served. Not all of the bases try to semi-regularly poison their agents, but this one just fucking sucks.

“Fine,” Sasha says. “I’ll put up with you for the food.”

“Knew you loved me.”

Sasha makes a furious hissing sound, not unlike a cat, but he follows Stefan out of the base and into a jeep, and they both pretend, for the thirty-minute drive, that they’re not staring at each other out of the corners of their eyes.

They place the order and wait at a table in a quiet corner with good sightlines. Stefan doesn’t miss how Sasha looks much more relaxed out of the base, the tension perpetually locked into his limbs a little less out here.

The rest of him is the same—striking blue eyes, pretty pink lips, and long, dark hair to his shoulders. Stefan has had many vivid dreams of that mouth on his mouth and that hair in his hands. Sometimes, he wakes up and almost remembers how Sasha tasted.

Each time, he wants to know his taste for real.

“Something on my face?” Sasha asks quietly.

“No. Just your face.”

A hint of a smile crosses Sasha’s face, and Stefan’s breath hitches. But then it’s gone, and Sasha speaks as if the former exchange didn’t even happen.

“That was too much food for just you. Even if you eat like a pig.”

“So do you, sweetheart.” Sasha’s expression darkens at the endearment, and Stefan continues talking before he gets a salt shaker thrown at him. “It’s for Wanda and Pietro. She did well in training today.”

Sasha blinks, then shakes his head.

“You spoil those kids.”

“Well, yeah. That’s what you’re supposed to do with kids. Not…this.”

“Stefan,” Sasha sighs, and this isn’t how Stefan has imagined Sasha breathing his name, but he’ll take it. His dreams will probably make something fun out of it.

It’s only after they’re back in the jeep that Sasha says, “They chose this. You can’t forget that.”

“I never do. Doesn’t mean they’re not young. And that it’s not wrong that the world’s so shit, it drove them to this.”

He starts when a hand clamps down on his leg. The touch is gone before Stefan understands it was a clumsy attempt at comfort.

“World’s not fair,” Sasha says, looking straight ahead. “It never was.”

“No. But that doesn’t make it right.”

After a long pause, Sasha very softly says, “I don’t understand you.”

“Well, you’re welcome to try. My door’s always open.”

Sasha shakes his head, flipping Stefan off with a gleaming metal finger, but when they drive into the empty garage, Sasha’s the one who fists his hand in Stefan’s shirt and pulls him across the seat.

They don’t collide in a kiss, but only almost. He can feel Sasha’s warmth breath on his mouth.

“This is a bad idea,” Sasha says, quietly despairing, and kisses Stefan.

It’s rough and a little frantic, their mouths clumsy as they learn each other and then surer, softer. The angle’s not the best, but Stefan works his hand into Sasha’s hair and lets the long strands run through his fingers. They’re as soft as he imagined, and the kiss—

“Better than the dreams,” he says.

“Dreams,” Sasha murmurs. “You—yes, this is better.”

With that, he pulls away, climbing out of the jeep so fast that Stefan is left holding thin air. When he shakes off the daze and climbs out, Sasha’s arms are laden with food and he’s pointedly not looking at Stefan.

“Sasha—”

“Not here,” he says. But then, quietly, he adds, “Leave that door open tonight.”

Stefan’s face hurts from smiling by the time they’re inside, and Sasha is still pointedly not looking at him.

The twin’s quarters are empty. They’re not at the mess either, though a few of the agents inside look at them with keen eyes. By the time they check the training rooms and come up empty, the smile is wiped clean off Stefan’s face.

“They should have been here. Wanda said she’d wait.”

Sasha is frowning.

“Pietro said they have tests in the evening, but…it should not be yet. Wait. I have something.”

He shifts the food bags to one hand and fishes his phone out with the other, and Stefan tries to wait patiently, but there’s a cold weight in his gut and patience has never been his virtue.

“What are you doing?”

“There’s a tracker on Pietro,” Sasha say, still tapping at his phone. “Not mine, but I’ve been training him in the forest the last couple of days. They wanted me able to find him in case he ran off.”

“He wouldn’t,” Stefan says softly. “Not without Wanda.”

Sasha slants him an unreadable look.

“ _We_ know that,” he says. “Come. I found him.”

They take the elevator to the sub-levels, deeper than Stefan has been before. He’s pretty sure they don’t have the clearance for this, and the grim expression on Sasha’s face says he’s aware of it too, but they say nothing and ride in silence. A woman in a lab coat enters and exits after a few floors, barely paying them any attention, and Stefan lets out a slow, measured breath.

The doors open to a narrow, brightly lit corridor. Stefan can hear voices, soft murmurs that come from beyond many doors. Sasha says nothing but his eyes are narrowed and he walks with purpose.

He catches Sasha’s wrist.

“Be careful,” he says and lets him go.

“Ste—” Sasha swallows, throat clicking. “You too.”

They don’t draw their weapons, but Stefan keeps a wary hand on his belt, and Sasha’s left arm is raised in front of him. They find a door, same as the others here, and beyond that, there are—

Cages.

.

.

.

The world is bright and unfamiliar, but there’s screaming all around him and a battlefield soaked in blood, as familiar as the strong beat of his heart. The bodies that fall to him are not—too many limbs and gaping maws and blood that’s not red. But they bleed and die, and that’s good enough. The Captain knows his purpose.

There are others, the Widow and the Soldier, darting around him, flashing knives and sniper fire while he’s the battering ram. They’re strangers, but everyone is a stranger to him, and they work well together.

An alien throws the Soldier into a tree, and the Captain leaps in front of his fallen form. He grabs a toothy snout and doesn’t make a sound when a jagged fang sinks through his palm, but the creature howls, high and horrified, when he tears it in two.

Another rushes him, but the Widow slams into it and takes it down in a flash of black and red. The Captain turns around, offering his uninjured arm to the Soldier, but he’s on his feet already. He’s lost his mask and there’s blood on his lips, but he seems unharmed. His eyes seem bluer now, and that strange, senseless thought echoes around the Captain’s head as the two of them throw themselves back into it.

He loses his own mask and gains a shallow cut that stings hot from temple to chin, and when the Soldier pulls him away from a blue-lipped woman’s glowing spear and sends them both rolling through the mud, the Captain thinks, as absurdly as before, that they match again.

Somewhere, the Mad Titan battles the Avengers. There is lightning and thunder, the earth and sky lashing with violence, but that’s not their fight. This is. Their orders were very clear.

Around them, there are other black-clad bodies, alive and not, each bearing S.H.I.E.L.D’s insignia. He saves one from a six-legged not-dog and watches, frozen, as she turns to dust mid-thanks.

“Captain?”

He whips around, and there’s the Soldier, arms outstretched and eyes wide. He takes a stumbling step and crumples.

Steve screams.

.

.

.

“Good morning, Captain Rogers,” says a soft, unfamiliar voice. “You’ve been asleep for a long time.”

Steve opens his eyes and finds himself in a hospital room, with a man in a suit sitting by his bed. He’s old, hair grey and face wrinkled, and there’s something fatherly about the soft set of his face—right until you look into his eyes and find nothing staring back.

Steve tries to sit.

“No, no, Captain,” the man says, a large hand gripping Steve’s shoulder. It’s a gentle grip but Steve stills. “That’s better. You shouldn’t move yet. Do you remember what happened?”

Steve frowns, head aching as he tries.

There was—dust? No, snow.

Africa? No. No, it was—

“Alaska. I was…training new recruits.”

The man blinks.

“Ah. You were. You had an accident, Captain. Do you remember that?”

He tries. It’s fuzzy. But he remembers—cold and pain. Familiar.

“Some,” he says.

The man straightens.

“Well, I can’t blame you. It’s been chaos, Captain. Your accident happened at a very…inopportune moment.”

“Sir?”

The man gives him one of those gentle smiles, somehow warm and hollow at the same time.

“I’ve forgotten manners in my haste. Alexander Pierce, Secretary of the World Security Council. Well, I was. I’ve only been recently reassembled myself, but I’ve never been one to take it easy. Neither are you from what I’ve heard.”

For the first time since he woke, Steve answers honestly.

“No, sir.”

“Good. Because there’s no time for easy. America needs you, Steve—”

.

.

.

“— _en Grant Rogers_.”

A reed-thin woman with wispy blonde hair frowns at him, her mouth thin and jaw set, but her eyes, they’re still so gentle.

“Ma—”

It’s a child’s voice, his voice, and he’s in a child’s body, but—

Ma.

-

He wakes with a scream fluttering in his throat and chokes it down, gulping in air. His head’s spinning, sounds and faces all blurred together—a kaleidoscope of a thousand lives.

Something wet drips on his face.

The smell hits him first.

The face poised above his is familiar. There’s blood dripping down Wanda’s chin, two thin streams from her nose, and her eyes are bloodshot. She’s as pale as a sheet.

She smiles and her teeth are bloody too.

“Do you remember now, Steve?”

Before he can answer, her eyes roll back and she pitches forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *whistles innocently*


	7. forged in regret, i'm the silversmith (we're motivated by the scars that we're made of)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Brave, noble captain,” the other murmurs softly. “You were a very sweet dream. But dreams end.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s not the end! This is one of my plottier works, which means each word is like pulling teeth, but I’m planning one more long-ish installment and maybe a small concluding oneshot.
> 
> The trigger words for Steve that are hinted at are taken from another of my [Winter Soldier Steve fics.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22619599) We may or may not see all of them in later parts of the series.

He’s lying on cold concrete.

There’s a quiet nudge in the back of his mind, telling him to get up, but his limbs are heavy, his eyes ache, and it’s easier to just lie there, even though the floor is cold and hard and the stains on the ceiling make his heart pound.

He can’t remember how he got here. He doesn’t try too hard. All he can hear is the sound of his own ragged breathing.

He closes his eyes. Time turns liquid.

Eventually, there’s another sound. A steady _drip-drip-drip_. The beat of another heart.

Steve doesn’t want to open his eyes. He doesn’t want to see the stains on the ceiling or the drab walls around him or the source of that slow, steady dripping. There’s something cold and heavy in his gut, slithering icy tendrils into his blood.

_Listen close, Steven, you always stand up._

He stands up.

It’s a slow, stumbling process. His body doesn’t want to cooperate, limbs moving as if they’re deep underwater. He has to blink, again and again, to get his eyes to focus, but the room still shudders and twists around him. There’s bile at the back of his throat, and he chokes it down.

He rises to aching knees and forces his weak legs to take his weight.

The dripping comes from behind him. In front of him, there’s a thick, steel door with claw marks along its length.

No. Not claw marks. Fingers gouged the metal.

Steve turns around.

The figure on the chair is hunched into himself, ragged blond hair dripping sweat. He’s naked and bruised, covered in blood that seems to have no single source. Rivulets of red run down limp, trembling hands shackled at the wrists.

Steve knows him.

He knows that chair.

He walks forth on stumbling legs; a part of him is screaming at him to turn on his heel and run, but he knows, doesn’t he, that what’s on the other side of the door is as damning as this chair.

Steve falls to his knees in a pool of his own blood.

The other doesn’t raise his head, but Steve can see his mouth twist up into a smile.

“You finally see,” says the man he used to be. “Welcome back, Captain.”

Steve stretches out a hand to touch the body he left behind in back alley brawls and a one-bedroom apartment that lost its men one by one. A thin chin digs into the meat of his palm, but after a moment of resistance, the other lets Steve raise his head.

It’s the same face Steve sees in the mirror but smaller, more angular. After the serum, he couldn’t quite recognize himself at first; it was Bucky who made it okay. Bucky, half dead and delirious, who looked at him and said, _Steve?_ If Bucky, who’d known Steve at five and fifteen and twenty-five, in sickness and health and everything in between, recognized him, he couldn’t have changed that much.

But Bucky forgot too, didn’t he?

 _You were smaller_ , James said once. _In that dream. Skin and bones_.

Bucky forgot and Steve forgot, but now he remembers, and there’s a moment where he desperately, selfishly wants to forget—to go back to hopping dingy hotel rooms with James, learning him in blissful ignorance.

“No, you don’t,” says the other. He’s smiling, a sharp curve seems at home in that bloodied face. “He was never a stranger. You knew it, didn’t you?”

No, no, he—but he did, didn’t he? Steve could feel the pull, just like he could each time Hydra did this to them. The never-ending tests and missions; they scrubbed Steve and Bucky from each other’s minds, but they were always the same soul.

“Yes,” the other says, distinctly pleased. “He’s yours. You’re his. Hydra doesn’t have a claim. They can’t have him.”

There’s a mad light in those blue eyes, a hint of teeth in that sharp grin. For a moment, Steve doesn’t recognize himself, and it starts to sink in that this isn’t that Brooklyn kid, no matter what he looks like.

“Who are you?” Steve whispers, voice shaking.

“I’m you,” says the other, arching a cold eyebrow. “I’m everything you’ve ever been, Steve. This is your mind. It’s an ugly place, isn’t it? She dug it all up, that red girl. Do you think she’ll regret it?”

“Red gi—Wanda.”

The memory returns without fanfare—Wanda, with red eyes and bloodied teeth, pitching forward. Pain exploding behind his own eyes.

And now, this room. The first base. The first chair. He used to fight so hard before they made him forget why he was fighting. It was easier with Bucky; even remembering nothing, Steve always wanted to stay with Bucky.

He thinks of that first mission with James—the way his eyes lingered and how it ended. He thinks of those months in between, something inside him aching for a man he barely knew. 

“He’s mine,” Steve hears himself repeat. “James, he—”

“Bucky,” corrects the other, tone almost gentle. “James isn’t real. But then, neither are you.”

“What are you—”

Cold hands grab Steve’s face, blunt nails digging into his cheeks. Shackles still cling to those bony wrists and under them, Steve can see the angry red of abraded skin.

He can’t bring himself meet the blazing blue of the other’s eyes, but he doesn’t have a choice. Deceptively strong hands pull him closer until they’re nose to nose, and Steve’s pinned under a stare that skewers him to the soul.

“Brave, noble captain,” the other murmurs softly. “You were a very sweet dream. But dreams end.”

-

The dream ends.

Steve wakes in a white room. His arms are shackled.

-

“Woah there, big guy, easy.”

Steve stops yanking at his restraints because he _knows_ that voice.

“Romanova,” he growls.

“It’s Natasha, Steve,” she says, gliding into view. “We settled on that.”

Her gear is the same and her hair is still pulled into a tight bun, so it can’t have been too long. He glowers at her, a snarl twisting his lips. She’s smiling at him, soft and easy as if she didn’t stick him with tranqs when his back was turned.

“Fuck you,” he rasps, and, then, “Where is he?”

“Who?” she asks mildly. “Pietro’s fine. You did a number on him, of course, but—”

“ _Where the hell is Bucky?_ ”

It’s an enraged roar; Steve’s restraints hold fast, but the bed creaks and groans under him. And just like that, Romanova transforms into the hard, wary creature Steve first met, eyeing Steve with cold, calculating eyes.

“We couldn’t retrieve the Soldier,” she says, clipped but without a hint of the Russian accent she used to have. “The plan was to get you both out. But Rumlow got to him first. Maybe they suspected, or maybe they were just prepared. We don’t know.”

Steve hears the words but doesn’t quite register anything past the first sentence.

“We,” he echoes numbly. “Who’s we?”

“Not Hydra.” The answer’s quick. “You remember, don’t you? Wanda said she broke your programming.”

Steve pins her with a glare. She doesn’t seem affected, but she has the look of a woman who is willing to shoot him dead if it comes down to it.

“And who’s they?” Steve asks softly.

Her lips thin.

“Hydra.”

“Hydra has Bucky.”

“They’ve always had him. And you. But you know that.” She cocks her head. “Or do you? Programming like that isn’t easy to break. And stop fighting, Steve, those restraints were meant to hold gods and monsters.”

He didn’t even realize he was tugging incessantly at the things, but when he stops, the pain trickles in. He ignores it with the ease of long practice and focuses on Romanova.

“Better,” she says with a sharp nod. “We’re not going to hurt you, Steve.”

“Oh, I’ve heard that before.”

A smile flickers over her lips.

“I know. So have I. And if I were you, I wouldn’t trust me either.”

“Then why the fuck are you bothering?”

This time, her smile stays, but it’s twisted and barbed, turning the lovely lines of her face cold and cruel. And Steve, strangely, finds that reassuring. This is familiar. This, he can handle.

“I don’t know which Steve you are,” she says, “but I don’t think you’re Hydra’s Captain. Not anymore. Maybe not ever again. And I only have the stories and files of the man you were before they got you, but Steve, I’ve seen the way you looked at James. You’d move heaven and hell to get him back. That’s why I’m _bothering_.”

Steve’s heart gives a painful clench.

“You expect me to believe you actually care about him?”

It’s mean. He doesn’t deny that. Romanova’s expression doesn’t even twitch, and that’s how Steve knows she’s not unaffected.

“I don’t care what you believe,” she says. “But you’re a smart guy. Do you remember enough to figure it out, or should I give you the cliff’s notes?”

The door opens then.

“How about you leave that to me, Romanoff?” says the newcomer, a man with an eyepatch who stares at Steve with unsettling intensity. “Good evening, Captain Rogers.”

Steve stares flatly at him, hardly pleased at the interruption. He’s not too fond of Romanova—Romanoff?—at the moment, but at least she’s familiar. And she knows Bucky, which counts for something whether or not what she said about wanting to save him is true

“Who are you?” Steve asks when Eyepatch seems content to just stand there and stare.

“Name’s Fury,” he says. “Wouldn’t mean much to you, I’m sure. Your masters are another matter, but they think I’m dead.”

“I don’t have _masters_ ,” Steve snarls.

The word wouldn’t have struck so hard before, when Steve lived in blissful ignorance—a sweet dream, said the other. A whole life built out of pretty lies.

Silence follows his proclamation. Romanova is eyeing him with a thoughtful expression. Fury looks amused. Steve curls his hands into fists and very deliberately does not tug on his restraints.

“Barton’s asking for you,” Fury tells Romanova.

She gives him a flat stare.

“Really, Nick?”

Irritation flickers over his face. Steve watches them stare each other down, confused, his fury fluctuating. Romanova is the one who gives, breaking eye contact with a huff.

“I’ll be seeing you, Steve,” she says, striding out of the room without a backward glance, leaving Steve alone with Fury, whose sole eye is now fixed on him with unsettling intensity.

Steve doesn’t look away.

After several, long moments, Fury comes closer and, with slow deliberation, pulls a device out of the pocket of his trench coat. A brush of his finger leaves Steve’s hands free.

He sits up in a rush. Fury, to his credit, doesn’t flinch.

Most of Steve wants to take this man by the shoulder and shake answers out of him, but instead, he takes a deep breath and remains where he is. His wrists ache from how he pulled at the cuffs, so he rubs them gently, not once taking his eyes off Fury.

Fury’s the one who breaks the silence.

“Captain America,” he says. “Not quite what I expected.”

“What or who,” Steve says flatly, not quite a question.

Fury smiles. It’s not a particularly pleasant expression.

“Maximoff was right then. You do remember.”

“Bold move to release me if you think I didn’t.”

“You won’t get out of this room, Captain. Not even if you kill me, though I would advise against that too.”

“Depends. Do I have reason to?”

Fury actually rolls his eye.

“We’re not Hydra. Come on, Cap, we went through all this fucking trouble to get you away from the squids.”

“Forgive me,” Steve says drily, “if I’m skeptical. I’ve lived whole lives because Hydra wanted to test me—test _us_. For all I know, this is another trick.”

Fury shrugs.

“Fair enough. But what do you have to lose? Either we’re not Hydra and you can work with us to save the damn world—and your not-so-better half.” Steve stiffens, and Fury’s gaze sharpens. “Or we are Hydra and the two of you are fucked anyway. I’ve seen those files. It’s a miracle you’ve survived this long.”

Files. Of course there are files. Steve fights the urge to screw his eyes shut and scream into his hands.

Memories tug at him, scattered images flitting across his head. He doesn’t remember everything, but he remembers enough that he wonders whether that’s a blessing. He has the important things—Bucky, the Soldier, James, a steady shadow at Steve’s side across decades.

“I have him,” Steve rasps. “I’ve got Bucky to lose.”

“You’ve already lost him.”

The bed’s railing creaks under his grip, metal crunching. This time, Fury takes a prudent step backward.

“Easy, Cap,” he says. “We’re going after him with or without you. We have to because they’re too dangerous with even one Winter Soldier. But, well, most of us don’t have a very vested interest in his survival, not like you.”

Steve pins Fury with a glare.

“Hurt him, and I’ll tear you into pieces.”

Fury doesn’t react to the threat.

“They’ll send him after you. After us. And we’re not in the habit of playing nice when people shoot at us, Cap. We had one golden chance to get you both out alive, but it’s only you here. Easier to kill a supersoldier than bring one in alive.”

Red creeps along Steve’s mission; he’s burning with rage, Fury’s words adding fuel to the fire. What keeps him in bed, hands fisted in his lap instead of wrapped around Fury’s throat, is the fact that he’s being deliberately, skillfully provoked.

It’s not subtle. But god, it’s effective.

“Except with me,” Steve says, soft and dangerous. “With me, you can take him alive. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

Fury smiles that same, unsettlingly sharp smile.

“Well, if you’re volunteering…”

“Enough. I don’t have the patience for games. Who are you—you and your people? What the fuck is happening?”

There’s a moment where it seems like Fury may not answer. But then he nods and pulls up a chair Steve didn’t even notice before. He’s within lunging reach, but Steve can clear the breadth of this room in seconds, so nowhere is safe. Somehow, he doesn’t think this man’s an easy target. And the surety with which he said Steve won’t leave this room didn’t seem fake.

He would still try if he were doing this for Hydra, if he had a mission programmed into him—god, the burns on his temples, the way they twisted Erskine into—

Steve takes a deep breath and pushes it back.

Later.

“It’s a long story, Cap,” Fury says, pulling Steve out of his thoughts.

“Well, make it short.”

Fury snorts.

“How much do you really remember?”

“Enough,” Steve says shortly. “I know I’m Steven Grant Rogers, son of Joseph and Sarah Rogers. Born in 19-fucking-18.”

“Fourth of July,” Fury adds wryly. “Like you were made for this mantle.”

“Fuck you.”

“I’ll pass. What else?”

“Bits and pieces. And that’s all you’re getting.”

“Did you kill Margaret Carter?”

Steve freezes.

_His target’s a woman—dark hair and dark eyes and a mouth like a bleeding wound—_

_“Steve?” she says and falls—_

Peggy. God, he forgot, that brief flash of memory overpowered by the others, but he remembers know, it was her, it was Peggy, and she knew him, and he—

Fury’s staring expectantly at him, but Steve can’t answer. He wants to, the confession clawing up his throat, putrid with horror, but his lips won’t move and his tongue is a heavy, leaden thing in his mouth.

But it must show on his face.

Fury nods grimly.

“Thought it might have been one of you. We have some sketchy records saying Barnes was frozen in Siberia at the time.”

Steve hears the words, but they don’t quite sink in. In his mind, Peggy’s falling over and over and over.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. is hers, she…” he whispers. “A shield.”

“A homage to you, I’m sure,” Fury says. “Didn’t matter much in the end. It was rotting even before you killed her. Though her murder sure made it worse.”

Steve flinches. Fury doesn’t react.

“What—” he asks hoarsely, clearing his throat as if that will ease the heavy pressure in his chest. “What happened? How did we end up here?”

He’s not talking about the two of them in this room; he means the world, this strange, confusing place he can’t understand. There are scattered realities in his memory, half-forgotten names amidst false lives that stand in stark contrast to the cold bite of cryo and the blinding pain of the chair, which sucked every ounce of life out of him.

His temples seem to throb, but Steve doesn’t dare touch the scars there.

Fury’s silent for a while, studying Steve expressionlessly.

“It’s a long story,” he says in the end. “The world has changed…considerably from the last time you were yourself, Captain. Gods and monsters walk among us, and you’re one of them.”

Steve sucks in a sharp, furious breath.

“For once,” he says softly, “give me a straight fucking answer.”

Fury leans forward, pinning Steve with a steady stare.

“I don’t have one, Captain. But you asked what we are. We’re what S.H.I.E.L.D. should have been; most of us were part of it before we realized it was Hydra. Rotten to the core. We did what we could. But we had aliens to deal with, the world to save, and Hydra wasn’t the highest priority.”

“Bullshit,” Steve snarls.

Fury’s unaffected.

“I did say _was_. Thanos is dealt with, the Stones aren’t a concern. Hm, you do know Thanos, don’t you? Can’t be sure what’s in your head. You didn’t recognize Romanoff when you saw her—”

_—too many limbs and gaping maws and blood that’s not red—_

_—the Widow and the Soldier, darting around him—_

“I fought with her,” Steve says, frowning, another memory that got buried in the deluge. “Bucky and I, we—she was S.H.I.E.L.D. Not the Red Room.”

“The Red Room doesn’t exist. It hasn’t for decades. Just another piece of the lie they weaved for you. They’re thorough, I’ll give ‘em that. But you broke free. Over and over. Both of you did whenever you were together. That’s why I’m taking this chance, Cap.”

Steve’s getting a headache. He hasn’t had time to just sit and think about everything Wanda showed him—all the memories now swimming in his head. Bits and pieces assault him, sharp blows that make him stumble, and he doesn’t know when he’ll fall under their claws.

Still, there’s a picture forming in his head. A puzzle with half the pieces missing. The glimpse it offers is damning all the same.

He can’t do this.

“Where’s Wanda?”

“Oh?”

Fury, for the first time, looks surprised.

“Where’s Wanda?” Steve repeats. “I want to talk to her. Not you.”

“My feelings are hurt, Cap,” Fury drawls. “Now, what makes you think I’ll let you at my strongest agent?”

“Because she can fucking take me, and she’s proven it ten times over. I trained that kid. She’s become what I knew she’d become. I want to see her.”

“You sayin’ you’d trust her?” Fury asks with a raised eyebrow.

“I don’t trust anyone. I don’t even trust my own fucking head. But I know her.”

And that’s enough. It has to be.

-

Fury leads him to a room much like his own—white all over, with beds that have railings. They remind him, a little, of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s medical wings, but he doesn’t ask.

Fury doesn’t come to the room, but the door closes very firmly behind Steve. He doesn’t test whether it’s locked.

From the bed, Wanda smiles wanly at him.

She’s concerningly pale, with deep circles under his eyes. At least she’s not bleeding like she was the last time saw her—barely a glimpse, but Steve’s head clings to everything that’s not been burned out of him.

Wanda’s the one who burned them back in. And his head still hurts, a deep, throbbing ache that defies description. But it’s nothing like the chair’s savagery. Steve thinks—knows—he should thank her, but he can’t make himself speak.

Wanda just stares unblinkingly at him.

“Are you angry?” she finally asks, freeing Steve from his own silent spell.

“No,” he breathes. “No point being mad at you, kid.”

A smile flits across her mouth.

“Stefan,” she says. “I was scared when they took you away. Terrified they’d hurt you. Pietro was worse over Sasha. The two of you were the only…good things we had, if you can call it that.”

Steve corrals his limbs into moving, stumbling to the chair at the edge of her bed. She reaches over to take his hand, and he lets her, staring at the delicate fingers wrapped gently around his own, calloused ones. There are rings on her fingers, of various colors and intricate shapes. Steve presses his thumb to one and thinks of her pale, shaking wrist trying to throw a punch.

There are words crowding up his throat, but he doesn’t know their shape.

“Steve,” is all he says in the end. “It’s Steve. And he’s Bucky.”

“I know,” she says. “It’s good to meet you, Steve. Properly.”

“Hell of a meeting.”

He looks up; she’s wearing a sheepish smile, but her eyes are bright and a little wild. There’s no red in them. Then, suddenly, her face falls.

“I’m sorry,” she says, squeezing Steve’s hand. There are unfamiliar callouses on her palm.

Steve’s not quite sure how to respond. In the end, he settles on, “What for?”

“Everything,” she says unhelpfully. “For the paths we took, even though we had to. For messing with your mind when it’s exactly what they did. Mostly though, I’m sorry I—I couldn’t get him out.”

Steve looks away, at their joined hands, and focuses on his breathing, on not crushing her gentle fingers.

“What happened?” he asks. “Why couldn’t…why just me?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be.”

“I _know_ ,” he snaps. He grimaces and tries to give her an apologetic smile, but his mouth feels stiff and judging by her pitying look, he doesn’t look sorry, just crazy. With deliberate calm, he says, “I know it wasn’t supposed to be just me. But what _happened_? Fury and Romanova keep playing games, and kid, I don’t have the time or patience.”

“I played games too,” is all she says. “Why come to me?”

“At least I know you.”

“True,” she murmurs, head gently tilted. “Better the devil you know. Except, of course, when the devil is Hydra.”

“Wanda—”

“They knew,” she cuts in. “Or at least, they suspected. Maybe they were just prepared for me. After all, they made me as surely as they made the two of you.”

Steve remembers that—the tests, the training, the _cages_. He knows, now, why James froze in that base. He wonders if that was a test too. 

“But I’ve…evolved, let’s say,” Wanda continues. “They couldn’t kill me. Or catch me. But they managed to weaken me enough to get Barnes away. Used some words, and he dropped like a stone.”

Steve frowns.

 _Longing, Rusted_ —

— _Miracle, Midnight_ —

— _Nine_ —

— _Freight Car—Sacrifice_.

He digs his nails into his temples, as if he can tear them out of him. His head’s splitting.

Smaller, gentler fingers touch his head. The pain recedes.

He opens his eyes in time to see Wanda withdraw red-tipped fingers. He catches her wrist.

“What did you do?”

She looks pinched, expression almost pained, but her voice is steady.

“Made it better. I can hear you, you know. I’m too exhausted to control it.”

She can hear—

Of course she can. God. Steve’s the one who said she’d be monstrous one day. He wasn’t quite expecting this scale.

Wanda grimaces. She seems paler than before.

Steve lets go of her hand and says, “If you’re exhausted, you shouldn’t be using your powers. Should you?”

“Shouldn’t,” she agrees, with a smile that’s almost mocking. “But limits aren’t absolute. I died once, do you know?”

Steve blinks at the non-sequitur before he understands, whole body flashing cold.

“Pietro went first,” she says, eyes oddly intent, a little red in their depths. “I saw him. After we came back, I realized it had been different for me.”

Steve barely hears her, thinking of—

_Captain?_

_—_ _the Soldier, arms outstretched and eyes wide. He takes a stumbling step and crumples—_

Wanda’s voice jolts him.

“It would have been just a long sleep for him, Steve. He wouldn’t have suffered. Kinder than cryo.”

She barely flinches when Steve growls.

“He _died_.”

“And came back. Not many have that luxury. But a lot of them came back too, and Alexander Pierce isn’t wasting time.”

Steve remembers Pierce; the clearest are the meetings they had, when Steve was new to a mantle that was his to begin with. He was never too fond of the man but chalked it up to the unease he had around consummate politicians. Now, he knows better, aided by older, darker memories.

Pierce was one of the worst of Hydra’s leaders—and inarguably the brightest.

“He has Bucky,” Steve says, filled with cold certainty.

“Most likely. Tasha put a tracker on him, but they found it too fast. It won’t be easy, Steve. They won’t let him go. Nor you.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Steve says. “I’d rather die than leave him there.”

“You just might,” Wanda says, laughing, the sound just a little unhinged. In a blink, it’s over, and she’s smiling kindly at him—just a sweet girl. “Don’t be scared. Death’s not so bad.”

Steve’s reminded of their meeting in the café, how strange she was.

“The hell happened to you, kid?”

“Hydra,” she says easily. “And death. And life, of course. I told you, Steve. Don’t worry about me. You have half your soul to save. Ah, look—”

The door opens. Wanda smiles brightly at whoever is behind Steve.

And it’s careless for him to just sit there and sigh because for all intents and purposes, he’s in enemy territory, but he’s tired and aching, and he might just lie down and let these people kill him if he didn’t have Bucky to save.

He turns around.

And standing by the doorway, smiling a familiar, crooked grin is Clint—because of course it is.

“Who else is in on this?” Steve asks tiredly. “Sitwell?”

“Nah,” Clint says. “He’s a squid. True believer.”

“You’re supposed to be undercover in Europe.”

“I’ve died a tragic death. Right in time too. They’d have come for me when Tasha defected in spectacular fashion.”

Steve stores that away without pausing to think too much about it. Eventually, these little bits of information will form a clearer picture. For now, he’s too damn tired to care.

“What’s the plan?” is all he asks. “And when do we move?”

Clint’s face lights up.

“Aw, you came around! That was fast. I didn’t believe Fury.”

“I don’t give rat’s ass about Fury. I want Bucky back.”

“One track mind,” he says wisely. “Come with me then. You too, kid. Pietro’s awake and asking for you. You did a number on him, Cap.”

Steve should probably feel more than a twinge of guilt, but—

“Sorry,” he tells Wanda, not quite meeting her eyes.

“We knew the risks,” she says, expression knowing. “Knowing my brother, he’ll be impressed you beat him. Shall we?”

-

Wherever they are, it’s clear it’s some sort of base. It’s furnished more like the Triskelion than the numerous Hydra bases Steve remembers, but it’s small and there are very few personnel. Steve doesn’t see any more familiar faces, which he’s grateful for.

Wanda leaves them soon, presumably to go to her brother.

Beside him, Clint exudes nervous energy.

“Did you always know?” Steve asks, curious and resigned in equal measure.

“Um…no?” At Steve’s skeptical look, Clint ducks his head, rubbing the back of it in a familiar nervous gesture. “I’ve known about Shieldra for…a while. Me and Tash, we’re a package deal. They tried to recruit her, she played along, and well—shit happened. But trust me, I was as shocked as the rest when they pulled the Cap stunt with you. Even more when you turned out to be a pretty cool guy.”

Clint gives him a grin that fades into a puzzled frown.

“Wait, was that actually you or…?

“Them?” Steve asks drily. “No, Hydra didn’t program me to give a shit about your dog, if that’s what you’re asking. It’s never like that. They either made us blank or made us loyal. Our personalities were largely our known, just shaped by the little details they put in to guide us. The other way didn’t work.”

“Why?” Clint asks, sounding—and looking—morbidly curious.

“We kept almost dying,” is all Steve says, clenching his fists to stop himself, again, from touching the burns on his temple.

“That’s fucked up,” Clint says quietly. “I did a little brainwashing stint of my own. Tasha knocked me really hard on the head. Guess that won’t work with Barnes.”

“No,” Steve growls. “It fucking won’t.”

Clint wisely keeps quiet after that.

Steve’s led to what seems to be conference room; there are familiar faces around the table. Fury’s at the head, Romanova and an unfamiliar woman on either side of him. There’s another man, staring intently at Steve. Steve stares right back, recognition tugging at him. He’s certain he knows that face, but he can’t remember how or from where.

“Glad you decided to join us, Cap,” says Fury. Then, softer, “You _are_ joining us, aren’t you?”

“Fuck’s sake,” sighs the familiar-but-not man.

“Threats won’t work,” Steve says mildly. “Certainly not from you.”

“There’s no threat.” It’s Romanova, matching Steve in tone. “We’ll go ahead with or without you, Steve. It would be much easier with you. And of course, we can’t let you leave just yet, but the rooms here are pretty comfortable.”

“Cells, you mean.”

“ _Rooms_ ,” says Clint, exasperated. “No one’s locking anyone up. That never works out well, and no offense, Cap, but we don’t have the time to corral a pissed off supersoldier.”

“Glad to hear it,” Steve says drily.

Clint flashes him a wry grin and takes the seat beside the dark-haired woman Steve doesn’t know.

Steve stays where he is.

Several long moments pass; there are multiple stare-downs.

“This is painful,” says the man whose face Steve can’t quite stop staring at. “Captain Rogers, please, sit down. They’re spies, but they don’t bite, I promise.”

He pats the seat beside him, and Steve, for some reason, feels compelled to listen.

“And what about you?” he asks, warily joining the table.

“More soldier than spy,” he says, flashing Steve an adorable, gap-toothed grin. That flash of recognition rears its head again. “Sam Wilson, nice to meet you.”

 _Oh_ , for the love of—

“I know you,” Steve says. “And I’m pretty sure I’ve visited your grave.”

Samuel Wilson, the twelfth Captain America—Steve’s predecessor _and_ his successor—who reportedly died during the second battle with Thanos, necessitating Steve’s ‘appointment.’

“We’re all dead men here,” Wilson says cheerfully. “Except Natasha. For now.”

“I’ve faked my death before,” she says. “It’s not that hard.”

The other woman in the room snorts.

“I’m sure,” she says. Turning to Steve, she says, “Maria Hill. We haven’t met.”

Steve nods shortly.

Silence ensues. Steve gets the sense that none of them—even Fury—quite know where to begin. Steve sure as fuck doesn’t despite the restlessness itching under his skin. Half of him wants to be alone, to take some time to process everything, but the other half wants to be moving, _doing_ , for both Bucky’s sake and his own.

In the end, Wilson is the one who breaks the silence.

“So, first on the agenda—the Soldier,” he says, then eyes Steve unsubtly out of the corner of his eyes. “Uh, the other ones. Barnes.”

It’s very clearly for Steve’s sake, but it still has the affect of pushing the others out of their self-imposed silence.

“We lost him hours ago, and the last location is an abandoned airfield close to the base. We have no way of predicting where he is, what with the last of our spies ousted.”

Fury throws Clint a glare and gets an eye roll in return.

“I made a judgement call,” Clint says, “which turned out to be _wise_.”

Steve is vaguely curious but also just doesn’t fucking care.

“They’ll need a chair,” he says, and every head in the room swivels to him. “Bu— _James_ won’t hold up with me and Romanova both gone. There will be questions, and the programming will start to break.”

It was already fraying, Steve thinks. Even before Wanda showed them bits and pieces of themselves. It’s clear in hindsight—their instant attraction and unusually strong attachment.

James was a persona, and so was his Steve, but—they’ve done this before and there was always in a kernel of truth lurking under Hydra’s lies. Them. Steve and Bucky, Stefan and Sasha, Alexie and Dima…the Captain and the Soldier, again and again and again.

James never existed, except in all the ways he was incandescently reveal; he wasn’t Bucky, the way Steve wasn’t quite Steve, but they were them underneath it all, and the thought of that crooked smile and soft accent being burned away makes Steve swallow bile.

“Steve?”

It’s Clint, leaning forward lightly, his typical nonchalance nowhere to be found. Steve realizes he’s been zoning out. They’re all still staring at him, with expressions ranging from wary (Hill) to knowing (Romanova).

“Not many bases have one of those,” Steve says, not acknowledging the unvoiced questions. “Siberia did, but it was wrecked. Berlin. D.C. Granada. Those are all I remember.”

“Wrecked how?” Fury asks.

Steve shrugs.

“Whole base was wrecked. They tried to make more Winter Soldiers. Didn’t work out too well, so they got us—Bucky and me—to kill them all.”

Nobody reacts to that, though Fury’s eyebrow is somewhere in his hairline now.

“What else do you remember?” Hill asks keenly.

“A lot of things,” Steve says blandly. “Just as many I don’t. Thought we were here for Bucky.”

“We are.” Fury’s the one who answers. “But we need intelligence, Captain.”

“I’ll give you what I can, and I’m sure Wanda saw a lot of it. Bucky first.”

“That’s a given,” Romanova pipes up. “You realize we can’t trust you until he’s here.”

Steve turns to her, and they have a staring match with Wilson squirming uncomfortably in the middle.

He didn’t, in fact, realize. He would also like these people to stop fucking talking in riddles, as if they expect him to divine everything they’re carefully not saying.

“I don’t care about your trust,” he says succinctly.

“And that’s exactly why,” she says, with a shark-like grin.

“God’s sake,” Wilson cuts in with the exasperated tone of the marginally sane in a room full of batshit crazy, which is a role Steve remembers from hazy days with the Commandos and even hazier outings with Hydra’s death squads. That’s why he’s certain that under the veneer of calm reason, Wilson’s as bad as the rest of them. “What she means is that the two of you have a long history of being compromised when it comes to each other. We can’t risk Hydra using him to sic you on us, for example.”

Steve grits his teeth but nods because he’s right; god, he doesn’t Wilson has any true idea how right he is.

“They don’t need leverage to use me,” he says all the same. “I have trigger words too.”

They look neither surprised nor concerned.

“Wanda,” Wilson says when Steve turns questioningly to him. “She can fix it. She already has, a little.”

“It’ll be crude,” Clint says. “Her words, not mine. But the only guy who could have made tech good enough to rival Hydra’s shit is no longer with us, and his closest colleague is currently in space. There were others, but Hydra’s killed half and the rest are…not a wise option in case this goes tits up. Wanda’s our best bet.”

“How?” is all Steve asks.

“More of what she’s already done,” Romanova answers. “It’ll take some time.”

“We don’t _have_ time.”

“We also don’t have way to get Barnes,” Fury points out. “Can’t exactly storm them. Don’t know if you noticed, Cap, but we’re a little short on manpower.”

“Then how the fuck are you gonna topple Hydra?” Steve snarls.

“Woah, man,” Wilson murmurs from beside him.

“We have our ways,” Fury says, eye narrowed at Steve. “Which are none of your concern until your head’s your own. But we can’t waste those resources on a half-assed rescue mission. We still have other work to do. Barnes is a high-priority target, as were you, but he’s not the highest priority. The fucking world is. You get that, Cap?”

“He’s my _highest_ priority,” Steve says, an eerie calmness settling over him. “And I’ll get him with or without you.”

“That’s a suicide mission,” Hill says dispassionately. “Don’t be a fool, Rogers. You need us.”

“Death isn’t the worst of it, Hill.”

“Yes, and they won’t be killing you.” Romanova, this time, leaning across Wilson. “We can’t stage a rescue mission again, Steve. Using the twins as bait won’t work a second time.”

Steve meets her sharp eyes and holds it, and all he can think of it how fond James was of this woman, how they spat insults at each other with softness in their eyes. Did they put that into James too, or was it real? What was Romanova’s fucking excuse?

_You’d move heaven and hell to get him back._

“If that happens, do us all a favor and put a bullet in my head,” Steve tells her quietly.

Wilson sucks in a sharp breath. Romanova doesn’t even flinch.

“But not his?” she asks.

“Not his.”

“ _Guys_ ,” Clint whines. “Steve, you spent too long with the Russians, didn’t you?”

Romanova throws a pen at him, and the sudden, suffocating tension in the room dissipates.

“Anyway,” Steve announces in the aftermath, “I have a plan.”

Fury eyes him doubtfully.

“You have a plan,” he intones. “Do share.”

Steve shares.

The incredulous silence that follows is peaceful, for the single second it lasts. Then it’s chaos.

-

Romanova volunteers to show him to his room. Translation: she insists on escorting him to his not-cell. He’ll be here a few days. Maybe weeks. They did agree to his plan in the end, more for lack of options than anything else, but they were unanimously adamant that Steve wait until Wanda helped get rid of his programming. It smarted to have to wait, Bucky’s fall and James’s warm eyes haunting Steve’s mind, but he knew as well as they did that walking to Hydra with bombs in his head was a death sentence to both him and Bucky.

But it would take time, and first, Wanda had to recover from both Hydra’s attack and her rushed foray into Steve’s head.

The door Romanova leads him to is plain steel. It doesn’t visibly lock from the outside, but that’s not saying much.

She opens in for him, but Steve doesn’t step inside. He can feel her eyes on the side of his face.

“Did you mean it?” he asks without looking at her.

“Mean what?”

“That you care about him.”

“I never said those words—”

“Romanova.”

She huffs.

“Romanoff, please. Names are strange things. They have power.”

Steve breathes deep and very valiantly does not shake her.

“ _Natasha_ ,” he says. “Please.”

For a moment, she’s silent. Then, “Look at me.”

Steve turns to her. Her eyes are a piercing green, and she looks, as always, like he’s stripping him down to his soul. Steve doesn’t look away.

“I saw you in that battle,” she says quietly. “Both of you. He trained me, a long time ago. And you shot me through the stomach, once. Neither of you knew me in that battle, and I thought you didn’t know each other. But he called to you when he died. You broke through your programming when you saw it. There’s nothing quite as monstrous as love.”

Steve has to lean on the wall to steady himself, breathing past the onslaught of horror and mind-numbing grief.

“I told Fury to save you, not kill you. Don’t ask why. Fucked if I know. The twins agreed when they came back. Even with Wanda…as she was. We’re in this together, Steve. I won’t promise you happy endings, but it _will_ end, one way or the other.”

_I cannot promise you a happy ending, Steve._

She waits, silent, and Steve realizes she’s expecting a response.

“Alright,” he manages to choke out.

She nods and turns on her heel to march off, never looking back, and Steve’s left to stumble into the room, abruptly exhausted down to his bones. He knows she didn’t answer the question he asked—except that she did, in a twisted way that only makes sense if he doesn’t think about it.

In the room, at the foot of the bed, lies his shield.

Steve staggers forward, drops to his knees, and finally lets his blue-eyed boys drown him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I’d love to hear what you think!


End file.
